


paper castles, hollow crowns

by Kiintsugi



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Abuse, Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, Dark!verse, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Enemies to Lovers, Eventual Zutara, F/F, F/M, Fire Nation Victory AU, Friends to Lovers, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Mutual Pining, POV Changes by Chapter, Redemption AU, Sort Of, Zutara, azula is a useless lesbian, established tyzula, for the vibes, i am once again asking you to read a WIP i have no update schedule for, tyzula - Freeform, updating tags to mention i added an au playlist, zuko's probably a bisexual disaster too lets just be honest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:00:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 41,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25610239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiintsugi/pseuds/Kiintsugi
Summary: They call him the Avatar Killer, hero of the Fire Nation, son of Firelord Ozai. Only one of those things are true. But Avatar Aang is dead, Azula saw to that personally, and the credit is his. it’s been five years since that day, but Zuko and Azula’s work in the name of their father is far from over. Aang’s influence spread like a disease across the earth kingdom, and now the resistance is fighting back. Faced with the realities of war and the consequences of their past, Zuko and Azula return to the Earth Kingdom for one final mission: to stamp out the resistance, no matter the cost.Also known as the Zuko and Azula redemption fic/character study no one asked for with lots of Zutara and Tyzula because I’m trash
Relationships: Azula/Ty Lee (Avatar), Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 54
Kudos: 190





	1. Zuko I

**Author's Note:**

> i posted the first few chapters of this fic once before, but took it down to change literally everything but the first chapter and a half in a complete rewite/new direction for this fic. So this first chapter may feel familiar, and if it does im glad to see you here again! But i worked really hard on this rewrite and it's paced much better than the original so i hope you like it.
> 
> This is my "What if Azula killed the avatar at the end of book two" character study/fantasy inspired fic. It focuses fairly equally on the relationship between Zuko and Azula, Zuko and Katara, and Azula and Ty Lee, and details how the royal siblings would find redemption for their past actions, eventually joining what remains of the Gaang in an attempt to overthrow their father's global empire, once and for all.
> 
> also, big shout out to everyone who beta read the zero draft! Ya'll are real heros.

[Paper Castles, Hollow Crowns Playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2OXjLxHLdTk86GemKuRM9z?si=RzZoWg-LRoGRWmVKH0j7MA)

* * *

Zuko peers down at the small paper place card that reads, “Azula, Crown Princess of the Fire Nation” with a bitter scowl. He had thought that by now, he’d be used to being second-at-best at everything Azula ever decided to participate in, but there’s something about actually seeing his title being passed over to her that makes his blood boil. 

His own place card, one that simply reads “Prince Zuko, son of Firelord Ozai” is several seats down the table between two war Admirals, older even than Uncle Iroh, that smell of rotten fruit and old feet. Looking at it, Zuko realizes that even with his honor restored, he will never be good enough to earn a place at his father’s side. His hopes of being seated to his father’s left the way Azula is to be seated at his right, squandered and squashed. But, he thinks, those hopes were those of a child's, and Zuko is a man grown. Disappointed or not, he knows better than to let that feeling settle on his features. Especially in front of the royal family. 

“What’s the matter, Zuko?” Mai approaches from behind and entangles her arm around his own, leaning her chin on his shoulder. “You’re at the Fire Lord’s Honor Feast. Only the most important figures in the Fire Nation get invited. Isn’t that what you always wanted?” 

Zuko plucks his place card and squints at the glittering, golden font. “Azula says my father only does this dinner once a year out of traditional obligation. It’s supposed to inspire his soldiers. Make them believe that the war is just and they will be honored with titles and lordship for their service. But all he uses it for is to instill fear in his generals so that they’ll want to end the rebellion before he decides to end them.” 

“So then, don’t go. It’ll probably be boring anyway.” Mai shrugs and takes her own place card, which is placed in a pile that belongs to ‘the others’, groups of noble men and women lucky enough to be invited to the dinner but not honorable enough to be seated at the distinguished table, before sauntering off behind deep red velvet drapes to seat herself for royal dinner. “Have fun sulking by yourself.” 

“I will,” he argues all too loudly, stomping one foot on the ground with such force it was by the grace of the dragons that he's not an Earthbender. 

His father wouldn’t care if he showed up; not really. The only thing that mattered to Ozai, as far as Zuko can tell, is that he gets to show off his son as the infamous “Avatar Killer”. Something his father always does, just before going on to mention that he is, in fact, the lesser child. That for all of Zuko’s success in the war, none of it would be possible if it weren’t for the heir, Zuko’s sister, Azula. 

“Now now, Zuzu,” Azula’s voice rings in his head “I’m sure father wants you there. You are the Avatar Killer after all. Hero of the Fire Nation.” 

Zuko shakes his head at the thought. Sometimes it makes Azula’s voice go away. Other times it only makes her angry. 

“If you can’t be bothered to attend a royal dinner then maybe you don’t deserve to be royalty at all!” 

The place card bursts into flames in his fingers, and the ash sprinkles away. He curls his hands into fists and throws them down in an enraged fit, pacing the length of the small table. He groans audibly, gripping the sides of his head with calloused fingers and then marches through the velvets. He would show her. He would show Azula and Mai and his uncle. He would show his father, too. He’s more than just the Avatar Killer. He’s the prince of the Fire Nation. He commanded a ship, found the Avatar when no one said he would. He fought and beat Commander – no, Admiral – Zhao in Agni Kai. He was, no, he is, every bit as strong and royal and brave as Azula is. No matter what his father thinks. 

His father’s Honor Feast is to take place in the great hall of the royal palace. There’s a dozen or so small tables scattered around the hall for the noble men and women lucky enough to receive and invitation for attendance, as well as a raised, long rectangular table that overlooks the other dozen tables. This table is reserved for Zuko, Azula, as well as the generals and admirals from the Royal army and Royal Navy who best served the Fire Nation during the war. Behind and above that, would be the seat of Ozai. 

His father is to be seated behind fire and shadow, overlooking the tables from a place of power that has no rival. Below the flaming wall that separated his father from the rest of the dining party is a long mahogany table with thirteen cushioned seats all facing the same direction as the Fire Lord – looking over the lesser military officers and honored noble guests. Directly below the Throne itself would sit Azula - as marked by the golden cutlery and matching golden cushioned seat – where she is to sit next to his father’s most trusted General and Admiral. 

Where Azula and Ozai both sit front and center on varying raised platforms that overlook the feasting guests, Zuko’s is four places left of his sister. He is to sit on the Naval side, just two seats shy of the table’s end. It’s a seat that most of the world would consider a great honor to have, but Zuko can’t help but feel as if he’s been slighted and humiliated yet again by his father. As if no matter what he does to prove himself, he will never fully earn back the honor that was taken from him. 

His father is already present, Zuko can see the shadowy figure of his father’s presence from the corners of his eye, but he doesn't dare to look directly. He keeps his head hung low, eyes averted to the tables, and he count two down from the high table’s end to take his seat among the Admirals and Commanders of the Fire Nation Navy. 

He’s always been so careful to ensure his father’s approval. Even now with his growing disdain and yet another slight against him, he can’t help but strive to be the perfect son. His hair is finally long enough to pull into a tight, high ponytail, of which his servants had worked meticulously to ensure that not a single hair would fall out of place and he has new dress silks tailored for the occasion of bright fire and deep wine red. The silks themselves are accented in gold to distinguish himself as Royal nobility and he had even gone as far as to request that the silks go sleeveless so that his father can see the red arrow tattoos he had embedded into Zuko’s skin as a way to mark him as the slayer of the last living Airbender. 

From his position, Zuko can see ever face seated at the various small tables. Mai has chosen (for reasons Zuko can’t even begin to understand) to sit with Ty Lee, a bubbly woman with an overly social demeanor that places them both at the center table, surrounded by wide-eyed, drooling men. 

Mai is wearing silks of all black that hug close to her bare form. The sleeves are long and flowing, perfect for hiding knives within (which Zuko is certain she’s doing), and the whole outfit is accented only by her hair piece which is shimmering in red as dark as blood. Her hair is pulled back into a single bun rather than two, but she still lets most of it fall around her cheeks and shoulders. Her expression is as dull as ever; a mixture of boredom and annoyance as her literal ray of sunshine of a friend giggles and chats away with armored soldiers and sons of high noblemen in elaborate dress silks. 

“Who do they think they are?” Azula asks above him, glaring at the center table. 

“What are you talking about, Azula?” 

Azula’s eyes are locked on their friends. "Those men flocking around Ty Lee. What makes them think they’re worthy suitors to a woman who helped bring down the Avatar?” 

Azula is dressed in silks of similar fashion to his own: wine red, trimmed with gold, and with a golden hairpiece in her bun. The difference is that Azula’s silks resembled her armor in style, where Zuko’s resemble a sleeveless rendition of classic formal silks used hundreds of years ago. Her nails are sharp and painted – black on the fingers and red on the thumbs, and they dig angry marks into the fabric on her forearms, which are crossed over her chest in frustration. 

“What about Mai?” Zuko asks, pointing to the other woman who is poking her cheek with chopsticks and displaying an eye-roll so intense her eyes look like they might get stuck like that. “She’s surrounded by guys too.” 

Azula laughs. “There’s only one person on the entire planet crazy enough to date Mai.” Her eyes glance down at Zuko and he thinks for a moment he can see her smiling. Sometimes her insults feel a lot like her compliments. Sometimes her compliments feel a lot like insults. “Mostly because if anyone other than my own brother tries to lay a finger on one of my friends, I’ll chop off their dicks, roast them, and feed them to Puma Goats.” 

“I’m not interested in Mai,” Zuko protests. 

“And she’s not interested in you.” 

Zuko’s eyes follow his sister's gaze to Ty Lee. Ty Lee is wearing – surprisingly – not pink. For once. Instead she’s wearing a brilliant yellow dress silk. Her shoulders are exposed, as with her midriff, in typical Ty Lee fashion, and the fabrics fold and ripple like gold melting down her hips. It’s elaborate, accented in red, and far too extravagant for something Ty Lee to probably own herself. Still, even though they aren’t pajamas and even though she has shoes on for what might be the first time in a year, Ty Lee looks extremely comfortable in her formal get up. No wonder half the table is trying to favor her as a suitor. And it’s that little tidbit, Zuko knows, that frustrates Azula to no end. 

“Father wants you next to me tonight,” Azula says at last. “Your will be taking place at my left and Admiral Tezel will take this seat. Hurry up and move before someone calls you a fool and you dishonor father all over again.” 

Zuko looks at her, stunned. “What made him change his mind?” 

His sister flicks away her hair and casts golden daggers down at him. “Father has a job for us back in the colonies. We leave at sunrise. It will look better if you and I appear united. As we did when we destroyed the Avatar.” 

‘We’ as in ‘I’. As in Azula. As in not Zuko. But neither Azula or Zuko are stupid enough to say that out loud. 

Her glare travels from his scarred face to his tattoos. “Those things really are tacky.” 

Zuko looks down at his arms. “You think I wanted those old crones to stab me with tebori needles for two days so I that I could look like the Avatar?” 

“If you hate them so much then you should cover them up.” 

He shakes his head, fists clenching his silk trousers. “It doesn’t work that way, Azula.” 

Azula doesn’t answer right away and Zuko looks up to her to see what it is she’s thinking, but her eyes have settled elsewhere again, no longer focused on Zuko or his tattoos. Without her gaze returning to him, she finally says, “things aren’t as black and white as you make them out to be, Zuzu. Now, hurry up and join me. You can’t keep the Admiral waiting for his seat all night.” 

Zuko and Azula sit side by side just as the last few stragglers of the Fire Nation Elite push past the velvet curtains and find their places. Zuko crosses his legs and takes a long, meaningful breath to calm his nerves, the of the flames around his father’s seat singeing into his exposed shoulders. Next to him, Azula sits straight of spine with a twisted sort of grin pulling at the corners of her lips. Not the sort of twisted happy smile his sister has written as something of a signature, but a different kind that Zuko doesn’t much care to ever find himself on the receiving end of. 

To avoid Azula’s wrath at catching him staring, Zuko’s eyes avert to the tabletop, the glossy finish reflecting the light his father's flames and he see a shadow of an outline of himself; a messy, blurry sort of grey blob that vaguely resembled his form – dancing that same sort of listless dance as the reflection of flames in the mahogany. 

Zuko looks up from his blurred reflection as the servers begin to usher in the food, where every dish is brought first to Firelord Ozai. His father inspects each dish and takes the lord’s portion of what he wants, waving away what he doesn’t and sending each dish down to Azula and Zuko one by one. His father has taken choice servings of moo-sow steak, roast turtle-duck, mashed fire-squashes, and spicy Earth Kingdom kabobs. Azula’s favorite, superspicy octopus, is offered to her for the lord’s portion while Komodo sausages – Zuko’s favorite – are waved off by his father with an approving nod so that Zuko himself may take the lord’s portion. 

If neither his father nor he or his sister take first choice of the food, it’s waved away to one war lord or another before finally making its way down to the tables seated below them. After severl dishes make their rounds, Azula reminds him to send food to their friends, and so he sends the sea soup to Mai and the ostrich-horse tea eggs to a soldier he recognized as having served on his ship during his exile. Later, Azula slaps his hand away as he reaches for the dumplings before ushering the serving girl down to Ty Lee. 

By the time the sweet cakes, pastries, and custards begin to make their way into the hall, Zuko can’t bring himself to eat another bite. He waves each of the dishes away and watches as the hall rings with a chorus of excitement. A drunken haze fills the air, clamor and egos rising as the night draws on, but he and his sister remain sober and alert. Earlier, Azula had helped herself to cup of spiced wine, but as the night drew on and the cup bearers returned to refill her drink, she waved them off with decisive apathy. She knew as well as he did that there would be no forgiveness for mistakes or foolishness tonight. 

“You could loosen up, you know,” Azula tells him as she sips at the wine in her cup. “There’s so much tension in your jaw that it’s making mine hurt.” 

“I am calm,” he fumes, careful to contain his anger so as not to raise his voice. 

“I don’t know how you do it, but you’ become a worse liar by the year.” He can see her smirking behind her cup. “You better be careful, Zuzu. You wouldn’t want father to find out about our little secret, would you?” 

Azula has always been a master of speaking without being overheard, and when no one around them so much as turns to question what it was Azula is implying, Zuko isn’t surprised. He goes back to picking at his food, pushing around the sesame balls he can’t bring himself to eat. 

“Zuko.” He turns to face her again, raising a curious eyebrow at her tone. “Relax.” 

“You’re one to talk,” He says, stabbing the sesame ball with his chopsticks. “Your chopsticks are one splinter away from snapping” 

“And you’re one depressive sigh away from ruining everything.” She tilts a small rice bowl to her lips and turns her gaze back towards the noble’s table, leaving Zuko alone, with no one to talk to and a mountain of anxiety over why his father has suddenly seen reason to place him next to Azula. Whatever this mission he has in store for them, he knows, it won’t be an easy one. 

* * *

As the dinner progresses, Zuko finds that Azula is getting more and more distracted, which is highly unusual for the pristine, hyper focused reputation she’s known for. Zuko keeps catching her side eyeing a military Captain at the table of Mai and Ty Lee. If he has to guess why, it’s probably because he’s being overly friendly and helpful – in particular to Ty Lee – of whom Zuko knows his sister is fiercely protective of. Their dynamic, as far as Zuko has ever been concerned, is a weird one. He doesn’t ever know if they’re close, _very_ close, or feuding. Sometimes it’s as if no matter what is going on the two can’t seem to separate, other times it feels as if Azula is refusing to acknowledge that the other woman exists at all. 

Still, even with their rocky and strange dynamic, Zuko knows that the vice tight grip on her chopsticks and the flaming scowl on her face tell a truth she will never admit. That she cares for Ty Lee, even if she can’t say it out loud. Just as Zuko cares for his sister more than he would ever admit. 

He thinks for a moment, maybe he should say something. That maybe, as older brothers should, he should comfort his little sister. After all, it’s what his mother would have wanted for them, isn’t it? To rely on one another and confide in one another? But just as this thought crosses his mind, he’s reminded of the heat that pricks the skin on the back of his neck from his father’s seat. His father would have none of it. He would see it as weakness in his children, an inability to stand on one’s own feet and rise to overcome the obstacles set before them. 

He also thinks that maybe someone should point out to the poor Captain the absolute look of pure rage in Azula’s eyes. As much as he cares for his sister, despite what he may want people to believe, of course – he also knows that she has the capacity to be unreasonably cruel to anyone who gets in her way. If only there was a way he could communicate with Mai, get her to subtly point out Azula’s scorn and convince this military man to back up before he gets himself pinned in a corner by his sister’s wrath. 

She won’t forget his face; he can see it in her eyes. And all Zuko can do is watch the exchange and hope that the Captain’s luck is on his side. That in his future, he’s never placed under Azula’s command. 

Occasionally, instead of scowling at the table across the hall, Azula would turn and speak to the general next to her, exchanging war stories and military tactics. Sometimes she would toss a few words in Zuko’s direction, too. But mostly, she keeps her eyes forward and something pressed to her lips; chewing, drinking – and when she is finally too full to continue – he even laces her fingers over her face to mask the cruel twitch of expression directed at the poor Captain. 

She’s always hid her feelings that way, just like their father. A stoic, hardened gaze with no tell other than the slightest twitch of her lips. 

Zuko, though, has always hidden his feelings differently. Or more accurately speaking, he’s always struggled to hide them at all. 

He doesn’t like watching other people; seeing the way they move so weightlessly, so genuinely through their lives. He could never live life like Mai or Ty Lee. An expression of boredom too insulting and demeanor of delight too carefree. Seeing them makes him uncomfortable, hyper aware of every twitch and curl of the muscles in his face. But with Azula too engrossed in her anger, what else is there to do? 

He watches a bored as always Mai chat idly with Ty Lee, who is beaming with the brightest expression Zuko has ever seen and it makes him wonder if the happiness he was meant to have in life has somehow been transferred to her. She’s just... too happy... too, well, everything about Ty Lee is too much. But now, watching as she laughs and drinks and pokes Mai’s arm with her chopsticks for reasons he’ll never know, she’s especially too much. 

Ty Lee isn’t the only one having a splendid time, however. Other generals and war heroes are just as lively as she is: rosy cheeks on faces that no doubt hurt from laughter. Most of them avoid talking with him and he’s sure it’s because, like his sister, he’s got some sort of angry, ‘don't talk to me’ sort of expression painted across his face. The ones that do lean over to speak with him must be drunk to have the courage they do, because they ask stories about his exile: the hunt for Avatar Aang. They want to know about his scar and training accident they all believed happened to him. They want to know about the tattoos. They want to know things that Zuko refuses to speak about. 

When they ask, Zuko tells them that the trauma of war is too much to think about, which they all understand. He tells them that his hunt for the avatar before his sister joined his crusade wasn’t a tale worth telling; that Azula tells it better. He tells them that the ‘accident’ was just that – an accident. He tells anything it is they want to hear so he can end the conversation as quickly as possible. He hates people watching, but even that is better than the beratement of questions from drunken, overly confident war generals. 

Behind him, watching as he always does, sits his father, the fires of his world dominating leadership warming the hairs on his neck. He doesn't know if his father is watching him, watching Azula. He very well could be, but Zuko doesn’t dare to turn around face him. Even so, he can feel the exact moment in which his father decides to address them all with his plans; the heat of his father’s flames singing the back of his neck and making his silks feel as if they themselves are flames licking at his skin. With this, he and his sister share a look, then turn to the guests at the royal dinner. 

The address and reveal of his father’s plans is finally at hand. 

“A hundred years ago, Fire Lord Sozin sought to spread the prosperity of the Fire Nation across the world with the hopes of creating unity and order to the four nations.” His father’s voice booms over the hall with an eerie sense of calmness. “However, the nations rejected our ways. They rejected the equality of women, higher education, honor and respect. They rejected the equality of marriage and wealth and economic stability of a united and harmonious world. After years of struggle and war my daughter, Azula – champion of the Earth Kingdom and my son, Zuko – the Avatar Killer, became instrumental pieces in ending this war once and for all, and due to their efforts, the Water Tribes and the Earth Kingdom have finally realized the error of their ways.” 

Azula stands at the mention of her name and Zuko knows it’s best for him to do the same when his father’s hand gestures towards him. His fingers curl into fists as he rises, white knuckled and tattooed a deep red that glows like lava in the light of his father’s fire. There are cheers for them both raining upon him. “The Avatar Killer!”, “Conquer of Ba Sing Se!”, “Fire Nation!”, and so many others lost in the roaring waves that crash upon him. 

His father silences them all again with a small gesture of his hand. “This war may have finally come to an end, but there are those loyal to the Avatar who still linger in the shadows. My generals speak of a resistance in the Earth Kingdom. A bug needing squashed. That is why, to honor those of you who once served the cause of our great nation during its most perilous century, my children will sail to the colonies to shine light on every corner of the world, and end this resistance once and for all!” 

The flames roar again, licking at the ceiling as if to taste the victory thrust into the hands of the royal children. The guests roar back, “Fire Nation,” much to the delight of his devilish sister and they shout “Firelord! Firelord,” in celebration. 

If he were younger, he might think these cheers were for him, but Zuko is old enough and grounded enough to know differently now. They cheer for the victory of war and battles won, they cheer for the prosperity of their people, they cheer for his father and his grandfather and all the Firelords who had ruled before them. They cheer for their heir, conquer of Ba Sing Se, and they cheered for the Avatar Killer. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and don't forget to come chat with me at https://kiintsugi.tumblr.com/ where i post headcanons, fic ideas, shitposts and nonsense, answer questions and even post unedited excerpts of my writing!


	2. Ty Lee I

Azula always gets what she wants, and Ty Lee gets the feeling that tonight, Azula wants her. 

The Crown Princess has grown more assertive with her desires following the death of the Avatar. Well, Azula has always been assertive. A more appropriate choice in word might be, “aggressive”. She makes her wants as important as her needs and proclaims her intentions towards every action she takes as if she has something to prove. As if she has to remind people that she is still superior to her brother in every way. 

Zuko has become something of a celebrity after killing the Avatar, no surprise. And Azula' become more and more irritable over Zuko’s newfound fame by the minute – also no surprise. And so, when Azula finally confessed to Ty Lee that she had actually killed Avatar Aang and not her brother, things finally began to make some sense for Ty Lee. 

Azula had told her, “I have nothing to gain from killing the avatar, and besides, Zuko makes a better ally than he does an enemy – and he is my brother – for however little that’s worth.” And that was all she ever said about it. It hasn’t done much to cure her irritation or swelling aggression, however. All it really did was give Azula a new outlet. Not that Ty Lee has never been an outlet for Azula before. Things just... well, everything changed after that. 

Sometimes Ty Lee wonders if Azula had really given Zuko credit because she wanted him around. Azula is definitely nicer with her brother in tow, and Zuko has always made everything more fun. But there is a part of Ty Lee that wonders if Azula had been more selfish than that; if she had been more paranoid than that. 

The avatar had managed to elude the Fire Nation for a hundred years. Somehow managing to survive a direct lightning blow to the chest while in that weird, all-powerful glowing state wasn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility. Or it wouldn’t be if Azula and Zuko hadn’t personally escorted Aang’s rotting head to the Fire Nation to present to their father like a trophy. 

Azula killed the Avatar, and Zuko got the credit. 

Ty Lee can feel Azula’s eyes watching her, her silhouette, as she changes out of the dress attire that the Crown Princess had ordered to be made especially for her. It wasn’t a strange feeling. Azula has watched her for years: curious, envious... lustful, and Ty Lee knows the feeling of each of those golden glares. The way they search, the way they challenge, the way they desire. Especially, the way they desire. And Ty Lee doesn’t mind it; Azula has never overstepped her personal boundaries. Despite all her flaws, all her entitlement, Azula knows to respect certain things – no matter how badly she wants something. 

She pokes her head out from the side of the paper-walled room divider, finding that Azula is leaning in the door frame with her arms folded across her chest and an almost devilish smirk entangled upon her features. “Hey, Azula?” She asks, almost sheepish. “Can you give me a hand? I don’t really know how to get this thing off.” She shakes her arms to represent her struggles and flashes a wide, cheeky grin. 

“You’re a woman of noble birth, Ty Lee,” Azula says flatly, uninterested and clearly annoyed. “You should be well acquainted with intricacies of noble dress attire.” 

Ty Lee wines, pouting in that way she knows gets the princess’ attention. “’ _Should_ ’ is a really strong word, Azula.” She knows she’s pouting, even before she throws her arms and stomps her foot into the ground. Just like she knows Azula is deflecting her – not out of some sort of disgruntled irritation – but out of self-restraint. She knows Azula takes great pride in herself on her willpower, and she will never overstep her boundaries – no matter how enticing Ty Lee makes herself to be. Not that she’s trying to entice the Princess. At least, not intentionally. Ty Lee just, well, this is just the way she is with Azula. “Will you please just help me?” 

Azula’s already hard eyes narrow. “No,” she decides, telling Ty Lee that cute pouting and slightly dramatic complaints will alone are not enough to sway her. “Why would I help you with such a simple task? What sort of noblewoman doesn’t know how to remove her own dress silks?” 

Ty Lee frowns and ducks her head back behind the paper divider. “Okay, then I’ll just find Mai and ask her to help me.” It’s a genuine option, and she’s not lying about it by mentioning it, but there is a part of Ty Lee that hopes to win Azula over somehow. 

“Mai will think you’re more pitiful than I do.” 

That’s also a genuine option. Mai will think Ty Lee is pitiful. She hadn’t completely considered that. 

Ty Lee muses her options again, placing her index finger below her bottom lip. “Zuko,” she exclaims with a snap. “I’ll ask Zuko.” 

“You will _not_ ask my brother.” Azula’s shadow doesn’t move. Not once. She’s still standing in the doorway with her arms crossed over her chest and her golden eyes staring at her as if trying to firebend by sight and sheer, intensive determination alone. But, Azula's pride is too important, and Ty Lee knows she’s refraining from setting the divider ablaze despite the simple fact that she has the power to do so. 

Ty Lee turns her back to the divider and begins to pull at her silks. “If I rip these trying to get them off, you’re not allowed to get angry,” she says, giving in to Azula’s stubbornness. Still, she half expects Azula to snap back, daring Ty Lee to see what she would do if she rips the expensive silks she had so kindly provided to her dear friend. She half expects Azula to laugh at her when she _did_ rip the silks, prodding at her as if Ty Lee is going to cry over something as meaningless as silks because Azula never has understood that it isn't objects themselves that mean so much to her. But there’s nothing; none of it. Azula doesn’t say a thing. 

She steps back and starts to turn towards the divider to see what’s going on with Azula, but her back presses into something and it takes everything she has within her not to yelp in surprise. 

“Hold still.” Azula’s clawed fingers pull at the knotted laces of her dress silks. She yanks at them, forcing the laces to separate and Ty Lee has to grip at the silks to keep them pinned against her breasts as the fabric rolls down around her hips. “I swear Ty Lee, sometimes I wonder if you really are better off sleeping on the ground with peasants and bears.” 

She’s talking about the circus, of course. Or maybe she’s referring to their time living in a too small tent hunting for the Avatar. That sort of thing was always easier for Ty Lee than it was Azula or Mai. “Just because I don’t like dress silks doesn’t mean I’m uncivilized.” 

“No, the fact that you walk on your hands and hold chopsticks between your toes makes you uncivilized.” Azula yanks another knot free, this one against her waist. “The fact that you can’t untie knots makes you annoying.” She pulls away another tangle. 

“I can work a knot,” Ty Lee protests with a smile. She spins around on her toes and spots a dash of pink hanging over the divider. She lets the fabric fall, comfortable with herself around the Princess after all they’ve been through, and reaches to grab her own, much more comfortable, pink top. “I just have to know where they are first.” 

Azula wants her. She can tell by the look in her eyes; the way they trail down her skin, the way they rest on the crystal she wears around her neck that hangs just above her breasts. She’s wanted her since the dinner, since the moment her father decided he had a task for her. Azula has always wanted someone before a mission or after training. Someone to push around. Someone to push up against. It never has matter which. More often than not, as Azula got older, one or the other started to become one in the same. A sort of all or nothing campaign Ty Lee doesn’t completely understand. She’s never figured out if power turns the princess on, or if she simply enjoys taking her frustrations out on someone else. 

Still holding her shirt, Ty Lee wraps her arms around Azula’s neck and presses herself up against the princess, having far too much fun pulling at her already taught strings. She feels this slight twitch of Azula’s muscles, a hint of a moment where she doesn’t know what to do or how to react to Ty Lee’s boldness. It’s rare for Azula to have any moments of doubt or hesitance, and every time she’s able to force even the slightest hint of that type of response, Ty Lee is filled with a sort of pride she can’t quite explain. A feeling that she knows comes with being the only person on the planet capable of cracking open this side of Azula. 

She presses herself closer, lets her fingers dance on the back of Azula’s neck and twirl around the little hairs that are too short to bundle up in her perfect, gold accented bun. “If you want,” she suggests with a sultry cadence reserved only for her princess. A voice of initiation, of promise and excitement. “I can show you what I mean. Just say the word, and I'm yours.” 

That’s the thing with her and Azula, she never knows what’s she’s getting into; what Azula thinks of her and their relationship that day. It’s like Azula’s feelings towards Ty Lee change by the hour, by the minute or even with a single breath. Even when she’s certain that Azula wants her, their history makes it impossible for Ty Lee to have the courage to make a move herself. Too many times has she thought the wrong thing, said the wrong thing, felt the wrong way at the wrong time. Too many times has she found herself burned by Azula’s wrath. 

But when those walls come down, when Azula allows herself to be the person that Ty Lee knows better than anyone else... it makes it the back and forth of being wanted and unwanted, of love and hate, worth every trial and tribulation. 

Mai thinks she’s crazy for feeling this way, for putting up with Azula’s hot and cold the way she does and, truth be told, maybe she is. Maybe there’s something wrong with her for wanting something that punishes her more than it celebrates her, for going back again and again to stick her fingers in the fire instead of simply basking in its warm glow. But she can’t help it. She’s been wrapped up in Azula’s web for as long as she can remember, and those few instances where Azula shows her that she’s as entangled by Ty Lee as Ty Lee is to her, well, it’s the greatest feeling in the world. 

At least to her. 

To be recognized, seen, praised. To be wanted. Her. Not her sisters, her, wanted by the Crown Princess of the Fire Nation; the heiress to the world. 

Azula’s fingers snake their way around her waist, her clawed nails digging into the silks around her hips and biting at the flesh underneath; marking her, claiming her the way Azula does when she gets this way, when she gets filled with a need and desire that only Ty Lee is lucky enough to be on the receiving end of. Azula’s golden eyes are heavy and lidded, her pupils blown and her lips just barely parted, inches away from Ty Lee and heated by her words, by her invitation; a welcome to touch her, taste her, feel the heat of skin against skin. 

“You’ve always been mine,” Azula rumbles, squeezing her clawed grip tighter around Ty Lee’s hips. 

She really has. She can’t deny it and the very thought of belonging to Azula makes her squeak with need. 

One of Azula’s hands grab her jaw; fingers sliding along Ty Lee’s cheek as she tilts her face towards her and presses their lips together and, spirits, did she need this more than she realized. After hours of playing nice with Military men and pretending that she and Azula didn’t have whatever it is this is between them, she really, truly needed to feel Azula’s desire for her again. 

It’s like fire crackers exploding on her every nerve, like a wildfire surging through her veins; this heat that swells from within her at Azula’s touch. It happens every time and each and every time it makes her shudder in Azula’s hold and prompt her to beg for more. Her lips part, her fingers claw at Azula neck, and the explosion of need she knew was coming attacks her hard and fast. Her breasts press against Azula, glide along the cool silky fabric of her dress attire until they’re hard and sensitive and begging to be touched. 

Ty Lee drowns herself in Azula; her touch, her smell, her taste. She revels in the way her fingerprints burn possessive marks into her skin and the way her nails claim her like a trophy; greedy, hungry, and proving. 

Azula pulls herself a breaths distance away and whispers host against her skin, “say it.” 

Somehow, through the hot haze of Azula that clouds her mind and swarms her with everything that the Princess is, she knows and understands. That Azula wants her, badly so. But it isn’t until this moment, this demand, that she realizes how much she _needs_ Azula. 

“Please.” 

Azula closes the distance between them again, but before their lips can touch, the sound of Zuko’s voice calling out to his sister carries into the room. 

“Azula, are you in here?” 

Ty Lee hears Azula’s tongue click with annoyance against her teeth and feels as her finger slip away from her. Azula steps back, putting distance between them and crosses her arms over her chest as peeks out from behind the paper divider and meets her brother’s search. “Over here,” she says, her voice dripping with irritation. Azula shoves Ty Lee’s shirt against her and harshly whispers for her to “get dressed,” before disappearing beyond the paper divider to address her brother. 

“What do you want, Zuko?” 

Ty Lee quickly pulls her shirt over her head and adjusts her braided hair. Then she let’s the silks fall to the floor, grabs her pants, and pulls those on too. 

“We need to inspect the ship. Get familiar with the crew, go over plans. You know, prepare.” 

She can’t see Azula, but she can imagine the way she’s probably looking at her brother about now; narrowed eyes, stoic and stony, a slight look of annoyance about her. The thing is, Zuko is here for a good reason, and if Ty Lee knows this then there’s no question in her mind that Azula does too. 

Ty Lee knows better than to pop her head out and join the conversation. This thing between them, despite how long as it’s been going on, it’s never been something they spoke of or acknowledged with anyone. Suspicions he may have aside, even Zuko is in the dark, and Mai… she doesn’t know nearly as much as she might think she does either. Not wanting to reveal herself, Ty Lee stands silent as a shadow, biting her lower lips and practically holding her breath; hoping that despite Zuko’s very sensible request, Azula sends him away. 

She doesn’t though, and Ty Lee knows that it’s the sensible thing to do. Still, she can’t help but pout when Azula gives in. 

“Fine,” she hears her huff from the other side of the divider. “Let’s get this over with.” 

* * *

Ty Lee would like to call herself a patient person, but she isn’t. She’s terrible at waiting, and when Azula is involved, she’s somehow even worse. 

There’s loads that needs doing. From selecting and informing the crew of the mission and their part in it, to loading the barrels of supplies onto the ships themselves, to debriefs and war council meetings with the chief strategists, and even to getting reoutfitted with battle ready armor (something neither Zuko nor Azula had worn since their days hunting the Avatar). Ty Lee can’t even begin to fathom the immense workload ahead of the royal siblings; the sheer amount of stress weighing on their shoulders, the tenacity and authority they needed to readopt in order to get their vessel ready for deployment by first light. 

Zuko hadn’t been wrong in seeking Azula out to help with last minute prep, but Ty Lee can’t help but wish he hadn’t. In the long run, if he hadn’t, Azula would have been riled up and ready to fight literally anything that gave her the wrong look at the wrong time, but right now Ty Lee is being selfish. She didn’t much care (at least not like she usually might) about anything that wasn’t her own selfish desires. 

She could go down to the docks and try and help, maybe even speed things along, but she knows better than to interfere with Azula’s work. If Azula had wanted her assistance, she would have made that clear before she left with Zuko. And maybe Azula has no intentions of bringing Ty Lee along at all this time around. Maybe she, and perhaps Mai too, have nothing to bring to the table that would encourage Azula to recruit her friends in this mission. After all, Ty Lee isn’t a soldier; she isn’t the type of person who can kill on command. She’s just an acrobat with a unique, pacifistic skill. Maybe this time around, Azula isn’t looking to merely, destabilize and cripple. Maybe this time she has every intention of burning everything in her path to the ground. 

Deciding that it’s best not to interfere, Ty Lee spends practically the entire night spying on the docks from Azula’s room, watching the lights of torches and paper lanterns dance across the distant waters. She can only imagine how hectic it must be; struggling to make last minute preparations for a mission publicly announced only a few hours prior, working under the intense eye of both Zuko and Azula’s command. Especially Azula’s. She isn’t exactly lenient when it comes to her expectations, for herself or others. But it isn’t until the wee hours of the morning, long after Ty Lee has given up and fallen asleep, curled up in a squishy chair by the window she had been looking out of, that Azula finally returns. 

“Ty Lee,” Azula whispers softly, stirring Ty Lee awake from her ache inducing sleep with a gentle shake of her shoulder. “Wake up.” 

Ty Lee hums a groan in response, refusing to open her eyes. 

“Wake up,” Azula whispers again with a hiss that’s far more forceful and impatient this time around. She squeezes Ty Lee’s shoulder, shakes her again, rougher this time and longer too. 

“I’m awake,” she manages, one eye blinking open despite the heavy lids of her eyes that fight to remain closed. She reaches with sleepy arms for Azula and wraps herself around her neck, pulling the princess down into her cozy sleeping position in a half-conscious attempt to convince Azula to let her sleep just a little longer. 

Azula pries Ty Lee’s hands off her. “You’re not,” she says. 

“I am,” Ty Lee argues, her voice and her once again closed eyes betraying her claims. 

She hears Azula growl with frustration, and normally, this would bother Ty Lee. But she’s still teetering on the edge of falling back to sleep and even the sound of Azula’s scorn isn’t enough to pull her back. She yawns, rolling onto her other shoulder and curls into herself, rubbing her face into the soft, plushy fabric and getting comfortable again. 

But Azula isn’t having it, and Ty Lee feels Azula’s arms wrap around her and pull her up and away from the chair. She has one hand wrapped around her back, fingers gripping Ty Lee’s triceps and the other curled under her knees and she carries Ty Lee away from the window and the squishy chair and places her on the bed. ‘You’re insufferable,” Azula tells her with annoyed tone as she carries her across the bedroom. “You know that?” 

Ty Lee nuzzles into Azula’s chest, but her cheek rubs painfully against something hard and cold and decidedly not Azula, despite the fact that everything else about her personal space has been overrun with everything that _is_ Azula. She opens her eyes as the strange, sticking feeling and realizes that Azula is dressed in armor just as the princess moves to set her down on the bed. She rubs her eyes as Azula untangles herself, and Ty Lee has to summon all her strength not to fall over into the plush feather bed and go back to sleep. 

“What time is it?” she asks with a stifled yawn. 

“Time to leave,” Azula says flatly. “Zuko is fetching Mai, and I have no intention of having them wait on us because you’re incapable of waking up, so hurry up and get ready.” 

Ty Lee blinks several times, letting her eyes adjust to the low light of the room. “’Kay,” she manages to say with a stretch. But the actual act of getting off the bed and moving about the room is harder than she thought it would be. 

Azula sighs again and even though Ty Lee isn’t looking, she’s absolutely certain she’s rolling her eyes at her as she turns around and yanks open a dresser drawer. Azula begins throwing things at Ty Lee’s head across the room; shirts and underwear, socks, hair ties; anything and everything she’s ever left behind that Azula has therein shoved into her dresser. “Get up,” she tells her again, a shirt slapping into Ty Lee’s head hard enough that it makes an audible noise against her face and jerks Ty Lee awake. 

She peels the shirt off her head. “Okay, okay,” she tells her. “I’m awake this time. Promise.” 

“About time,” Azula says, lowering her hand with a pair of pants wadded into her fist and ready to be unloaded like a weapon into Ty Lee like the rest of her belongings. “I sent a soldier to your place to collect necessities. Grab anything you want that’s here and let’s go.” 

* * *

It's still dark when Ty Lee and Azula reach the docks, but there is the faintest hint of light on the horizon; a slightly lighter hue of the sky that says the sun is only moments away from rising in the east. 

“Took you long enough,” Zuko says as they arrive. He’s got a pack slung over one shoulder and another hanging his grip by his thigh. Like Azula, he’s wearing armor of a matte crimson with accents of gold over black. For both the siblings the armor is new, it’s design something Ty Lee has never seen before, and they fit each of them like a second skin. 

Mai beside him has also changed out of her silks and into something more familiar and comfortable, and the four of them together almost resemble their younger selves again, filling Ty Lee with a sense of Déjà vu and remanence. But unlike the rest of them, Mai’s not holding a bag, Zuko having taken it, but she is playing with a knife; dancing its steel shine against the torchlight in her usual, bored fashion. “Can we go now?” she asks, her voice monotonous and dull. “We’ve been waiting forever.” 

“You’ll wait as long as it takes,” Azula scolds, huffing with budding anger. 

Ty Lee smiles forcefully to Mai, apologizing with her eyes and shrugging just slightly over their friend’s sudden foul mood. Not that they’re not used to it, of course, because they all are. Azula just tends to be like this most of the time. Still, with Mai knowing so much of Ty Lee’s position in Azula’s life, she can help but feel like she needs to take responsibility for the Princess’ less than friendly outbursts. Or at least, explain their reasoning. 

Azula leads the group down the docks and onto the Royal Sloop. The ship boasts gold on the roof of its tower and on the two-pronged bow, and is the absolute pinnacle of advancement and power in the Fire Nation Navy. They rode this very ship on their last mission to the Earth Kingdom, where Zuko and Azula returned home as a united force, with Avatar Aang’s head in a box. Just thinking about it – the violence of it all, the way it changed Zuko, the way it changed Azula – it makes Ty Lee shudder. 

It’s a two-week journey from the Fire Nation to the Earth Kingdom, and Azula wastes no time in getting them there. As soon as the four of them board the ship, she’s shouting commands at the crew to set a course for the port of Huo Hua in the Earth Kingdom. And not long after, Ty Lee can feel the once familiar rock of the ship as it pushes through the ocean waters towards the conquered Earth Kingdom. 

She takes her things down to her usual quarters while Azula and Zuko disappear to into the depths of the ship. Her room is small, barely big enough for the two cots (one for her and the other for Mai) and a narrow walkway between them. It has no windows, or decoration, just two cubbies above the cots where she and Mai can store their packs for the journey. Sitting on the cot that had been hers all that time ago, she runs her fingers down the rough, soot stained sheets, reflecting on the past and their part in shaping the world as it is today. 

Ty Lee had never expected things to turn out this way. Not in a million years. And more than that, she never, ever, thought that she would be here on this ship once again. She had truly believed at the time, that returning home after everything they went through, she and Azula and Mai and Zuko would finally be free of the darkness and the violence of war. That the four of them had earned themselves a life of peace. And yet, here they are again, off again to destroy an enemy too elusive for the military to handle themselves; a covert team of experts sent to do unthinkable acts, no matter the cost or the consequences. 

They were just children the last time. Foolish and naïve, all of them – Azula included. But they’re older now. Wiser. Stronger. And in Azula’s case, far more terrifying than she has ever been before. She doesn’t know what awaits them in the Earth Kingdom, but after everything they’ve been through, everything they’ve done for the sake of the Fire Nation, she knows that there is nothing in this world that can withstand the wrath of the Royal siblings. 


	3. Zuko II

The last time  Zuko set foot on  Azula’s Royal Sloop he was nothing more than a boy obsessed with honor and redemption. But in order to redeem himself, in order to restore his honor, he had to be willing to do things than no honorable  man would ever do. 

He had thought  at the time, in his youthful  naivety ,  that after everything he had done and gone through, that when he finally returned home as a hero of hardship and war, he would never again leave it. He had thought that he and  Azula had done the impossible, that they had ended a war and brought about the era of peace and prosperity his ancestors had dreamed of for the world. He thought, surely, the cycle of violence would end and that the Fire Nation would build upon the ashes of war a world far better than the one they had left behind. 

But none of that happened. 

The war ended, yes, but the world was still broken and burned. People are still fighting, starving, struggling, and dying because of the war that ravaged the lands for the last hundred years. His father does literally nothing about it. The colonies are supported, as they’ve always been, but the occupied territories still operate as prisons and slaughterhouses for those unfortunate enough to not have been born into the Fire Nation. The scars of war run too deep, and the wounds still too fresh. And now he and  Azula , royal blood of the dragons and the heirs to the world, are being sent from their home and back into the still smoldering battlegrounds they had left behind in their childhood. 

All to stomp out the bugs of the resistance, allies of the Avatar.

He’s leaning over the railing of the ship’s deck, watching the waves of the ocean roll past him with roars and hisses, replaying the brutal images of  Aang’s death in his head as he ventures further and further away from the safety of his home. The waters, for some reason, calm him. He can’t really explain it, but as long as he stays focused on the water, focused on the sound of crashing waves and smell of salt and brine in the air, he can keep his temper intact. He can keep his mind off the glaring marks on his skin that lead only to remind him of darker days, and a time he wishes had never befallen him.

It isn't supposed to be this way, he thinks, glaring at the red arrows that stain his skin. He wasn’t supposed to come back here. He wasn’t supposed to return to the darkness he had left behind. He is Prince  Zuko , son of  Firelord Ozai , second in line to the throne of the world and the killer of the Avatar. He’s supposed to be living a life of lavish and luxury and comfort. He is supposed to be home with his people, acting as a light, a hero. He’s supposed to bring joy and pride to the great Fire Nation Civilization. He is supposed to be commanding armies to do his bidding, not living and working beside common soldiers and peasant cooks. 

What even is the point in these stupid arrows if he’s being sent off to the Earth Kingdom like a pawn in his father’s plans?

Zuko growls, his teeth grinding and his jaw tensing. He closes his eyes, breaths in the salty air, blows out a tuft of fire. His jaw slacks, color returns to his once white knuckles, and a stillness settles in the pit of his stomach. He will face his demons, overcome the darkness with the light of his bending. He will squash the resistance like the bugs that they are because he is Prince  Zuko and he rules over these lands. He will turn these arrows into a symbol of the Fire Nation’s greatness, of his greatness. And he will do it all in record time.

Zuko turns his back on the ocean and looks to the setting sun, his fingers curling into tightly balled fists. He’s sick of the ocean, sick of nothing but endless water, sick of the anxiety that’s sitting like a ball of hot iron in the pit of his stomach. He wants to go home; go back to the life he had fought so hard to give himself. Not sail into a foreign, conquered land for what feels like the thousandth time. 

He rolls back his scapula, popping the vertebra in his spine as he straightens his posture and remembers who he is. “I am Prince  Zuko ,” he reminds himself. “Son of  Firelord Ozai and second in line to the throne. People bow at my feet and fear my power.” Somehow, saying the words out loud helps; his words acting like a ward for the spirits that threaten to cloud his mind and strangle his heart. 

The ship hits a particularly hard wave and he’s thrown left and right as the ship pushes through the swelling waters, a spray of ocean mist blowing itself onto his face and leaving him damp and uncomfortable and fuming again. 

“You look wet,” his sister observes from across the ship, her arms crossed over her armored chest and her hair in its signature, perfect, bun. 

Since when did she get here? How long has she been watching him? 

“Great observation,” he drawls back, shaking the water droplets from his hands.

“Water almost suits you,”  Azula says, poking his buttons in that way she likes to.

Zuko snarls, “Shut up,  Azula .”

Calmly, with closed eyes and a sly smirk,  Azula raises her hands like a white flag. “Edgy,” she says. “What’s got you all wound up and itching for a fight?”

Zuko sighs, realizing that his sister’s observations aren’t wrong. He is on edge, and he is looking for a fight as a way to channel his pent-up feelings. If this were his ship, if  Azula were uncle  Iroh and not his sister, they would move through fundamental forms under the last breath of sunlight. He would feel the warmth of the sun's rays on his skin and in his veins; a gentle heat moving from his fingertips to his very core. But this isn’t his ship. And  Azula isn’t Uncle, and her way of dealing with stray, potentially wild emotions are nothing like he’s used to.

“I’m just,” he starts, trying to find the words for how he’s feeling. “I didn’t think we’d be doing this again. I thought you and I were done fighting for the Fire Nation.”

Azula blows out a breath, her arms moving to  her hips. “We’ll never be done fighting for the Fire Nation,  Zuko . A hundred years of war doesn’t just go away  because the enemy  surrendered . If anything, it only makes things harder.”

“What do you mean?”  Zuko asks. “What has father told you ?”

“Nothing he hasn’t told you.  It’s just common sense. Maybe if you actually used your brain every once in a while , you would have realized  it sooner.”  Azula twirls one of her long bangs around her finger.  “ You aren’t really going to stand there and not figure this out, are you?”

Zuko grits his teeth, wracking his brain to try and make sense of what  Azula’s implying. The logical conclusion is that she’s implying that no matter what they do or how well the Fire Nation thrives, there will be those like the Avatar and his allies who would oppose change for the greater good in favor of less profitable, less socially and economically advanced societies. It’s under this idea that things fold together. War has ravaged the lands for a hundred years, even if his father had put efforts into cleaning up the damage and there was no resistance against the oncoming changes, it’s still unlikely that the world will truly see the benefits of these changes in such a short time span.

Azula can clearly read his expression as he deducts her logic, and she smiles slightly with pride when the realization dawns on him. “There you go,” she says. “Glad we’re all caught up.”

“Still,”  Zuko says, looking down at his tattooed hands. “I didn’t... We didn’t. We’ve done enough, haven’t we? We’re royalty,  Azula . We should be at the palace with our father, not sleeping on cots with common soldiers and putting our lives at risk.”

“You’re not wrong, baby brother. But that doesn’t change our reality.”

He hates it when she calls him that, but he can’t call her out on it. Not when she’s right. No matter what they  think or what they’ve done in service of their father’s rule, it will never change their reality. They’re weapons in the Fire Nation arsenal, the sharpest swords in the armory. Royal blood or not,  Firelord Ozai doesn’t care about anything more than he does cold, hard results and his children have the best  resumes and reputation for success. 

“Maybe it should,” he says, turning his gaze away from his sister.

“Don’t go getting all soft on me,”  Azula says. 

“I’m not soft,”  Zuko argues.

“Then prove it.”

Azula slides one leg back, her arms arcing into a sparring position that  Zuko himself is quick to mirror. For a moment,  Zuko and  Azula do nothing but meet the  golden gaze of the other .  Her, predicting his movements and him , predicting hers.  They side step into a slow circle, their left feet inching out and their right closing in.  Each movement  made and mirrored, predicted and countered ,  until  Zuko’s patience wears too thin and he lunges forward with a  furious strike. 

She counters it with a block, her forearm colliding against his fist and pushing it away with a skilled parry that exposes his side to  Azula’s oncoming knee. He feels the crack of her power against his ribs and he stumbles forward, gasping for air with the intensity of the strike. But  Zuko isn’t about to let the score be settled like this. He takes a painful breath, glides one foot over the iron floor, and readies himself to fight again. 

This dance they do, this fireless form, it's something he and  Azula have shared since their return to the Fire Nation five years ago. There is no bending or weapons involved with this, no, this playing field is as even as even can get. Just  Zuko and his fists against  Azula and hers.

In everything they’ve ever done,  Azula has always come out on top. She’s always been superior, advanced, untouchable. But the one thing that  Zuko has always excelled at was his use of the dual broad swords; a skill that grew from the seeds of their childhood sparing matching in which  Zuko – for a few small moments – actually stood a chance at besting her. Now, as adults, they find themselves sparring again. Now more often, and more violent, than ever. But there’s something about it. Something he can’t quite explain. A feeling of connection that he shares only in this moment with his sister. Something he knows  Azula can feel between them too.

Almost like bonding... if he and  Azula are even capable of such a thing. 

“First strike,”  Azula brags. 

“It doesn’t matter who strikes first,”  Zuko tells her.

“It only matters who strikes last!” This time,  Azula charges. Her speed is formidable and, in an instant, she’s closed the gap between them and grabbed  Zuko’s arm in one of her clawed hands. He tries to pull away, but her grip is fierce. She wraps her arms around his like a snake and yanks him down, bringing her other fist up to meet his chin. 

By the grace of the spirits,  Zuko manages to yank his head out of the way,  Azula's fist hurling up beside his head and grazing against his ear. With force, he bends his elbow and breaks the hold his sister has on his arm and pulls himself out of her grip and jumps back, putting more distance between them again and allowing him a moment to assess his sister’s intentions. She’s smiling that trademark, playful smirk of hers. The one that  Zuko can’t quite figure out. Is she having fun? Is she toying with him? Did she expect him to break free or is she excited that he acted beyond the scope of her calculations and predictions? 

Azula takes a step forward and changes her stance to something that resembles one of the many fire forms they learned as children. She curls her fingers, calling him, daring him to attack her, and sinks lower into the stance. 

Knowing that her patience far exceeds his own, he knows that trying to wait for her to strike first when she’s inviting and waiting for the opposite is a waste of both their time. But he’s hesitant to charge into this new stance without a plan. He thinks about the forms; how they transition from one movement to the next, how each strike flows as smooth and destructive as lava. If he attacks head on, he’ll walk right into a palm strike to the chest. But if he tries to flank her, she’ll be able to trip him – break his root – before he can even get into position.

A strategy, a risky strategy, pops into his head, and  Zuko acts the moment he realizes its chances. He charges  Azula , pushing all his strength into his legs and just beyond the scope of her reach, the moment her feet begin to shift on the iron floor, he leaps into the air. His hands press into  Azula’s shoulders and he pushes off his sister and over her head, exposing her back. He lands with a thud and moves to sweep his leg, connecting his shins with  Azula’s ankles and knocking her off balance. 

She falls, but catches herself with her fingertip and twists her weight into leg spinning sweep, her foot connecting with his forearms as he moves to block the attack.  Azula uses the momentum to fling herself back onto her feet, ducks under a punch from  Zuko and then dashes forward again, slamming her elbow into  Zuko’s chest and knocking his back, breathless and heaving.

Zuko stumbles, shifts his weight to his back leg to catch his weight and then pushes off towards  Azula again, his fist connecting with her shoulder as he charges back into the fight. His other arm reaches out, grabs the fabric under his sister’s armor and yanks it toward him, again throwing  Azula off balance and bring her stomach crashing hard into his knee.

Azula coughs up a gasp and clutches her stomach as she fumbles away from  Zuko . She coughs, heaves again, and then straightens her spine to reveal a wicked, excited smile; the fires in her golden eyes alight and raging. “Good hit,” she says. “Let’s see if you can do it again.”

His ears pick up the telltale whine of the iron doors of the ship and  Zuko chances a glance in the direction of the noise. He catches sight of Mai and Ty Lee, watches as Ty Lee elbows Mai and points in his and  Azula’s direction as if to encouraging her to agree to watch them spar.  Azula must have turned her gaze towards the noise as well, because when he turns back to her, she’s staring at her friends, ignoring him completely.

He should use to opportunity to strike, but instead he relaxes his stance and crosses his arms over his chest and waits for  Azula . And when she turns back to him, he smiles and says, “You sure do like to keep me waiting.”

Azula scoffs and shifts back into a fighting stance. “The world waits for me,  Zuko . Get used to it.”

* * *

They’re both laying on the deck, huffing and heaving and covered in painful marks turning bruise by the time the moon has risen in the east and the milky layers of the starry sky stare down at them with gentle twinkling playful sparkles.

He's painfully exhausted, his body beaten and pushed to limits he hasn’t reached for longer than he can remember, but mind is clear and calm again; empty, patient, relaxed. For the first time since boarding the ship he can look upon the world and appreciate its beauty without the intrusion of less sustainable ideas plaguing his mind. He’s sore and achy and he will probably regret pushing himself so far in the morning, but at the same time he feels better than he has in days. And he has  Azula to thank for it.

Zuko turns his head to look at his sister lying beside him. She has one hand tucked behind her head and the other outstretched to the sky. A pale blue light emits from the center of her palm and flickers against her features; a little flame dancing in her hand and her eyes serious with thought.

She closes her fingers, extinguishing the flame, and lets her hand drop to her chest.

Zuko calls her name and slowly,  Azula turns to look at him. 

“Thanks,” he tells her.

Azula says nothing and turns back to look at the sky.

He hasn’t been himself lately, but to be fair to his sister, he realizes now that she hasn’t been either. She may act the part, and she may believe in that part too, but deep down there’s something bothering her – same as him. For a moment, he contemplates asking her what’s on her mind, but he decides that asking her to share is only asking her for trouble, and instead he turns back to the sky as well and closes his eyes as a misty breeze kicks up and sweeps across his sweat ridden form.

When he opens his eyes again, Mai is standing over him; her ox bun hair casting a shadow over him that looks like a horned demon come to consume his soul. 

“What?” he asks.

“Here,” she says, dropping a canteen on his chest. 

Zuko sits up, slowly and with a slight groan, and unscrews the cap from the canteen. He takes his fill of water, realizing in that moment how parched and drained his body really is. He wipes a dribble of water from his chin, screws the cap back in place and sets the canteen down beside him. 

Sometime between closing his eyes and opening them again,  Azula had gotten up and she’s now standing at the edge of the ship, overlooking the waters much like he had earlier, but with Ty Lee beside her. He can see Ty Lee’s lips moving, but he can’t make out what it is they’re talking about over the sounds of the ship and the crashing of water against its hull.  Azula doesn’t look pleased or entertained though. She’s slumped over, her arms crossed on the railing, and staring off into the ocean while Ty Lee talks more at her than to her.

“Did I miss something?”  Zuko asks, turning to Mai.

Mai shakes her head. “No,” she says. “Nothing as far as I know.”

He chews on this for a minute and then grabs the canteen again, watching as Mai leaves him to join her friends against the railing of the ship’s deck. Alone again,  Zuko drains the rest of the canteen and then tosses it over his back. He grateful for Mai. She’s treated him kindly, even when he couldn’t be bothered to return the favor. The same type of person Ty Lee seems to be for his sister; someone who sees the best in them even when they’re at their worst.

He had dated Mai for a while; a little over two years to be exact. But even after their breakup, after he broke her heart, Mai has always been there for him. There’s strain in their dynamic now, of course, it can’t be helped. Spirits forbid the two get left alone without a task to occupy their time. But even though he’s hurt her, ignored her, pushed her away and broken the pieces of her she’s only ever shown to him, she’s always found a way to show she still cares. To show him he still has a friend in her. He’s glad, thinking about that friendship, that his sister has that same loyalty in Ty Lee as he has with Mai. Even if  Azula , like himself, often takes that for granted.

Zuko climbs to his feet and dusts himself off, feeling a sore pull in is muscles as they beg him to relax again. He ignores the call of pain, however, and instead moves to join the others. 

“How far out do you think we are?” he hears Mai ask when he joins the group and looks out to the endlessness of the ocean again. In the distance, a tiny blip on the horizon, lies a small island that, if he remembers correctly, has operated as a Fire Nation Territory for the past eighty or more years. He thinks it’s called Shao Jiao. If it is, that means they’re getting much closer to the Earth Kingdom and he’ll have to convene with  Azula over the war table to discuss how she plans on weeding out these supposed resistance fighters that have given the Fire Nation Army so much trouble.

Azula says, “At least another day. Possibly more since we lost time in that storm last week.”

“ Azula thinks we should stop at Shao Jiao. Leave the ship and exchange it for something less conspicuous. Come into  Huo Hua covertly.”

“The problem with that,”  Azula tells them. “Is that it if our enemy is tipped off about anything regarding our position or plans, they’ll have an extra thirteen hours to prepare for our arrival.”

“Enough time to lay a trap,”  Zuko says. “What if we send some of the crew to scout ahead? Like a decoy.”

“Now, there’s an idea,”  Azula says. “When you actually use your brain,  Zuko , you’re not entirely useless.”

* * *

“Here’s the plan,”  Azula tells them as they walk along the docks of Shao Jiao. “General  Zhai is giving us  access to a  small  vessel  that routinely traverse between here and the mainland to run supplies. I want the three of you on that ship . You’ll come into the mainland as part of their scheduled supply run. I, meanwhile, will continue  on course on my ship, keep the attention and the focus on me to root out any potential scouts or attacks.”

Zuko presses his hands into his hips and looks at the docks as he walks, listening to  Azula’s plan and searching it over for holes she may have missed.  Not that there are any to find,  Azula had always been exceptional  when it came to war tactics and  positionals . 

“ The ships leave in  half an hour . By my calculations, I’ll have to remain here for another three hours for it to appear as if we’re restocking and refueling.  But  with the speed of my ship, I’ll still  likely arrive  at the mainland before you. ”  Azula stops them and gestures to a small  cargo ship to their left. “ We reconvene on my signal in the mainland once we know our position  and leverage . From there  we’ll make our way to Ba Sing Se  to learn about our enemy and devise a strategy to weed them out, assuming that our arrival doesn’t already do that .”

Zuko looks at the small cargo ship. It’ll likely be cramped and uncomfortable, and he can already tell its going to have a weird smell to it. Squeezing in and hiding out with both Mai and Ty Lee in what was without a doubt going to be extremely small quarters wasn’t exactly what he had in mind when he suggested a decoy.

“I should be on the ship with you,”  Zuko says. “I don’t exactly blend in  with the commoner.”

Azula looks him up and down, debating his words and lingering on his tattooed hands for longer than he’d like. “Fine,” she says. “Mai, Ty Lee, you’ll have to fend for yourselves without  Firebending .”

“We can handle that,” Mai says dully.

“You can count on us,” Ty Lee chimes with a smile. 

“Since you’re coming with me,”  Azula says turning to  Zuko . “We’re going to be a much bigger target than I’d prefer to be. But, we might as well use that to our advantage.”

Zuko swallow and nods, steeling his resolve and putting his faith in his sister. When it comes down to it – as twisted, menacing, and manipulative as she is – she has always helped him in the end. In her own way, at least. When their grandfather wanted to have him killed, she tried to warn him; when he was exiled, she secured him a ship. When he found the Avatar, she helped him track him down; and when  Zuko couldn’t kill  Aang himself,  Azula still gave  Zuko the credit.

Azula smiles something that borders on wicked and cruel and  crosses her arms over her chest . She slides one leg back, leaning her weight onto one side as her gaze rolls back to her ship and then in the other direction again so that her golden eyes lock on hard and menacing on  Zuko . “You and I are going to make one hell of a fuss. I hope you’re ready for it, Avatar Killer.”


	4. Katara I

They started calling her “Master  Katara ” after the Avatar died, but if  Katara had truly been a master then  Aang wouldn’t have died at all. 

Often times,  Katara finds herself standing here – in the deepest tunnels of what was once the Cave of Two Lovers, looking upon the  firelit statue erected in  Aang’s likeness. It isn't the first statue made to honor the lost Avatar; when they first arrived  Toph insisted that as the Avatar’s  earthbending teacher and the first and only  metalbender alive, she was entitled to create the statue of  Aang in his honor. And everyone agreed with the idea of a metal statue until people actually saw what it was  Toph created: a metal shadow of a form that hardly even looked human. 

And then everyone remembered that  Toph was blind.

What had come to replace  Toph’s creation is a statue that looks so much like the carefree boy she once knew it sometimes hurts her to see it. But she makes herself come here, she makes herself face her failure, and she begs the spirits to forgive her. And eventually, this place became a place to seek council and guidance within herself. Because she isn’t  Katara of the Southern Water Tribe anymore; she’s Master  Katara , leader of the Final Resistance. She’s the most powerful  waterbender in the Earth Kingdom. She was  Aang’s closest ally, the Avatar’s only living legacy. She is the stitching holding them all together, and if she can’t keep herself in one piece, how can she possibly expect to be able to do that for anyone else?

The reality is, nothing makes a person grow up faster than the casualties of war; and  Katara is wise and weary beyond her nineteen years. 

This cave has become something of a refuge, a base of operations for the last efforts of the resistance. Where pure darkness alone reveals a path hidden by torchlight to the center of the mountain maze, and at its core lies a stairwell of earth that leads deeper still; down to a network of life, a city, free of the fire nation’s reign. It’s here, at this underground network’s true heart, that  Aang’s statue smiles down at her. Where his likeness drives her, consoles her, guides her. Where  Katara can be just  Katara . If only for a few moments.

“ Katara ,” her brother calls as he runs into chamber, huffing and out of breath. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

“I’ve been here,”  Katara says, turning from  Aang to look at  Sokka . 

He’s taller and broader than he’s ever been. His body conditioned and strong, with muscles that flex with every movement under the firelight and a scruff of chin hair that makes him look more and more like their father with every passing day. He, like her, no longer dons clothing of Water Tribe design; instead wearing the muted greens and yellows of the Earth Kingdom. His hair, however, much like her own, is still styled in the fashion of their people. It’s a small thing; easily changed and easily hidden in a pinch, but still a piece of themselves that they can keep true to their home.

“I should have guessed,”  Sokka says with regained breath. He wipes his brow with his forearm and hands  Katara the scroll clasped in his other hand. “Report came in from topside.  Azula’s ship is headed this way.”

Katara unfurls the scroll, frowns at it, and hands it back to  Sokka . “Is this speculation, or do we have multiple sightings?”

“We have four accounts, all saying the same thing:  Azula is on her way back to the Earth Kingdom,”  Sokka says as he tucks the scroll into his pocket.

“What for?”  Katara asks, thinking aloud. “She hasn’t left the capital in five years.”

“Maybe Ba Sing Se?”  Sokka suggests.

“Maybe,”  Katara says. “But somehow I doubt she’d come all this way just to check up on one city. There has to be another reason. We need to figure out what she’s planning.”

She and  Sokka fall into a walk side by side, their pace quick and hasty as they duck through the maze of tunnels that make up their underground sanctuary. 

Sokka says, “ Suki’s already on it. We have  Kyoshi warriors headed  en route to intercept at every port within her projected path.”

“That’s not enough,”  Katara says as they turn a corner and head up a winding  staircase of compact, bent earth. 

“I know that,” says  Sokka . “But the  Kyoshi Warriors are all we have in the vicinity capable of stealth. There’s no way we can get more teams from here to there unnoticed in time.”

Katara stops in her tracks and lets her eyes fall to the dimly lit floor, deep in thought. “Maybe not the militia,” she says, still working things out. “But you, me, and  Toph ? We can.”

* * *

She and  Sokka meet with  Toph above ground about a mile south of the Cave’s entrance where she’s training with a group of makeshift warriors that  Sokka has properly dubbed, The  Toph Team. Most of them were  earthbenders or remnants of Jet’s Freedom Fighters that  Katara has rallied to their side in his wake. It’s strange to find so many people willing to fight alongside them, especially when it had been the four of them for so long; the three of them for even longer. Sure, they got help here and again, but everyone always went their separate ways. And now, here they are, at the end of their rope. Together. 

The power of three.

She has to believe in it.

The training grounds is some of a small clearing at the base of another mountain. The resistance has used it for years to condition their warriors and train their benders,  waterbenders training under  Katara ,  earthbenders training under  Toph . They even have a few  firebenders in their ranks to join in on occasions to teach counter strategies to their own bending forms. Today, however, it just appears to be occupied by  Toph’s team; the  nonbenders working with weapons and the benders practicing forms, a few lucky individuals attempting to learn the secrets of  metalbending under  Toph’s watchful eye and brash guidance. 

“What are you two doing here?”  Toph yells from across the small forest clearing as soon as they’re in ear shot. Her back is to them, and her arms seem to be crossed over her chest, her bare feet caked with mud and buried in the earth she stands upon. 

Toph has grown several inches and her hair is cut short now. She’s still caked with dirt and grime, still refuses to wear shoes or shower at regular intervals, and she – like  Sokka and  Katara – now dresses in simple Earth Kingdom rags instead of the fine fabrics provided by her clan. In a lot of ways,  Toph hasn’t changed at all. She’s still stubborn and loud and filthy and foul mouthed. She’s still cocky and confident, brash and bold. But she has matured, even if it often doesn’t seem like it.

Katara looks around the training ground, smiles at the familiar faces as she passes by, and approaches  Toph so they can speak more quietly. “I need you for a mission,”  Katara tells her. “An important one.”

Toph beams at the prospect, but then her eyes narrow and she becomes visibly skeptical at  Katara’s words. It’s a fair response. Lately there hasn’t been any sort of activity that  Toph would consider to be ‘fun’ or ‘exciting’. “What sort of mission?” 

Sokka crosses his arms and says, “The vengeful kind. Our scouts reported sightings of  Azula’s ship heading this way.”

Katara adds, “We’ve sent the  Kyoshi warriors ahead for recon and interception, but you know as well as we do that even the  Kyoshi Warriors aren’t enough to stop  Azula . That’s where the three of us come in.”

Toph smiles with excitement, but the look on her face is just as dark and desperate for revenge as  Katara’s own. “Count me in,” she says, pounding her fist into her hand. “I can’t wait to crush that stuck up princess.”

Katara looks up over the cliff that overlooks the training grounds, spotting  Appa bathing in the sun overhead. “We’ll take  Appa ,” she decides. “I’m sure he’s itching for revenge just as much as we are.”

“Hey,  Appa !”  Sokka waves his arms dramatically, flailing about to gain the flying Bison’s attention.

Appa yawns loudly and rolls over, slowly pulling himself up on his six massive legs and stretching his limbs. 

“Yeah, yeah,”  Sokka says back at  Appa’s vocal yawn. “Come down here. We got a mission!”

Katara hears something that sounds like a rumbling groan come from the massive bison, but he does what  Sokka asks, and leaps off the  cliffside ; swirling down to them like a leaf falling from the trees in the autumn. His landing is soft, hardly making a sound, and  Katara greets her old friend with a pat to his head and stoke of her fingers between his fur.

“It’s good to see you too, buddy,” she says. “You up for a trip to the coast?”

Appa doesn’t oppose, and with his acceptance of their mission,  Katara ,  Sokka , and  Toph all climb  abord his backside and into the large saddle. 

Toph shouts, “You all better not slack off while I'm gone,” to the training warriors, and then promptly flops onto her back and crosses her arms behind her head.

Katara climbs to the front of  Appa’s back and seats herself where  Aang once rode. She takes the reigns tied to the Bison’s horns in her hands, and hears his voice in her head as she says the words, “yip, yip,” with a snap of her wrist. 

Appa leaps into the air with a graceful stride, and in moments they’re soaring above the trees, the mountain tops, and then above the clouds. The is thin and cold, and there's a wetness to it that mists  Katara’s face, but it familiar and comfortable and everything she’s misses in this world. She loved traveling with  Aang , even if it was dangerous, even if they were on the run. His optimism and excitement for the wonders of the world unparalleled, and the way he saw the world was unique beyond compare. None of her travels have ever been the same without him, and even on  Appa’s back again, things don’t feel the same. It’s missing something light and genuine. It’s missing  Aang .

Katara shakes her head and pulls the reigns, turning  Appa and sending them off towards the coastline. Now isn’t the time to get caught up living in the past. It’s time to make it right. They’ve been waiting for this for five long years, the moment where the Royal Siblings, even one of them, leaves the safety of their palace long enough for them to strike them down. For them to take revenge, for them to see justice done. 

It’s at the top of a long list of things they must do to liberate the Earth Kingdom, a task they thought they might not achieve without desperate measures. It’s something they’ve studied, trained for, prepared for. Especially the three of them, the three who lie at the heart of the resistance itself. 

“So, what do you think made her decide to come now?”  Sokka asks, breaking the silence that had fallen over them. 

“Who cares,”  Toph says. “As long as I get to kick her ass, I'm happy.”

Katara twists her head around, the wind whipping through her loopy hair. “Ba Sing Se, maybe? She is the one who conquered it, after all.”

“Nah,”  Sokka tells her. “Her trajectory is taking her to a port too south for her to logically be headed to Ba Sing Se.”

“ Omashu , then?”  Katara suggests.

“Maybe,”  Sokka says, rubbing his chin. 

Toph snorts with laughter and suggests, “Maybe she’s looking for us. Come to finish the job once and for all.”

Katara chews this over. As much as  Toph seems to think the idea is a joke, it’s not out of the realm of possibility. The resistance has spent most of the past five years operating in relative secrecy, but their last few missions has drawn a level of attention to their existence that she can’t deny might have traveled as far as the Fire Nation. 

“If that’s the case, then we’re probably doing exactly what she wants,”  Sokka says.

And he’s right. If  Azula is looking for them, they’re making her job all too easy by coming to her. Maybe they should have thought this through. Maybe they should have held council and taken a vote on the best strategy. Maybe they shouldn’t have let their thirst for revenge drive them to initiate a mission that’s, at most, only half baked.

“So, we do what she wants,”  Katara says. “Say we go right into her trap. If we know about it, what can we do about it to turn the tides?”

“Depends,”  Sokka says. “Do we assume she has her friends with her, or that she’s here by herself?”

“Honestly, I doubt she or  Zuko go anywhere without bodyguards these days,” says  Toph . 

“Or without each other,”  Katara adds. “They were only able to beat us because they had teamed up.  Azula’s not dumb either. She’ll know that her best chance to take the rest of us down is with the same team she had the last time she was here.”

“Unless she’s found someone even more terrifying to do her bidding,”  Sokka says.

“Right.”  Katara swallows thickly and turns back to look in the direction they’re flying in. “That’s a possibility too.”

“So, what do we do then?”  Toph asks. “Go in loud or try and outwit the Crown Princess at her own game? I vote loud. Show  Azula we’re not afraid of her.”

Sokka shakes his head. “No, we need a better plan than that. I say we meet up with the  Kyoshi Warriors and help them with whatever strategy they’ve already come up with.”

“I agree with  Sokka ,”  Katara says. “We’re not prepared to face  Azula head on.”

“Maybe you’re not,”  Toph counters with a bold and cocky look on her features. “But I am.”

* * *

“Get down,”  Suki hisses, shoving  Sokka down into the bushes.

“Hey, hey, hey,”  Sokka whines. “Ow.”

Suki looks at him, annoyed. “It’s bad enough you call came flying in on  Aang’s bison. Now you want to blow my cover?”

The  Kyoshi Warriors, or at least some of them, have placed themselves all over the town of  Huo Hua; hidden in plain sight. They’re disguised as wives and mothers, as merchants and florists, as mundane, forgettable faces, hidden in the crowds.  Suki , who's leading the operation, seems to have taken on the role of some sort of housewife, as she’s pinning freshly laundered clothes to line beside a small house that has a decent view of the port. 

Katara dips her head. “Sorry,  Suki . We didn’t think.”

“Which is why you leave the covert operations to me,”  Suki says , pinning down a sheet of fabric and pretending they aren’t here with her.

Sokka rubs his head, wincing slightly as he  pops back out from the bushes and  says, “Yeah, well, we’re here now. Might as well let us help.”

Suki looks around, her bottom lip tangling between her teeth. “Fine,” she says. “Get inside, quick. I’ll meet you there in a minute.”

Following  Sokka ,  Katara and  Toph toe walk, crouched and low, over to an open window on the small house. One by one they hoist themselves up and over, into the small home where they’re better hidden from those who might notice they’re not from around here. People who may be inclined to ask questions they can’t answer.

Suki joins them moments later with her basket of clothing tucked against her hip and under her arm. She sets the clothing down in the doorway and unties the hair tie holding her short hair back into a messy ponytail, letting it fall and frame her face in a way that makes  Sokka visibly swoon.  Katara elbows her brother in the ribs over this, prompting him to hiss and rub his side, but  Suki just giggles at the exchange and enters the home, pressing her hands into her hips and looking the three of them up and down. 

“So,” she says. “Why are you three here?”

“I thought you’d be glad to see us,”  Sokka says.

Suki blushes and replies, “It has been a few weeks, hasn’t it?”

Katara rolls her eyes and, like  suki , she puts her hands on her hips and shifts her weight to one side. “If  Azula is headed this way, I want to be the one to bring her down.”

Toph says, “Me too.”

“We all do,”  Sokka agrees. 

Katara says, “ Suki , we were there when  Aang died. We watched  Azula kill him. We deserve to be ones make it right.”

Suki closes her eyes and pinches the bridge of her nose. “It completely ruins my entire operation but, I see your point. And you’re in luck too,  Azula’s ship docked about fifteen minutes ago.”

Toph beams excitedly at the news and  Katara presses a hand into her shoulder to calm her again. “Just let us know how we can help,”  Katara says, making  Toph frown. “We’ll follow your orders. We put you in charge here, so you’re in charge.”

Suki turns and looks out the door, then back at  Katara and the others. “I appreciate that,” she says. “Right now, we’re still waiting. No one’s come off the ship yet but I have seen a couple soldiers walking around on deck.”

“Probably bodyguards,”  Toph says, and as if feeling the looks they were giving her she adds, “I had bodyguards and I’m not even royalty. Just rich. It makes sense.”

“She’s right,”  Suki says. “I doubt  Azula or  Zuko would leave the Fire Nation without guard. They’re too important to make that sort of risk.”

Katara looks down at the ground at the mention of  Zuko’s name. There was a time, a brief moment in the catacombs, where she thought... she thought  Zuko might not be a bad guy after all. He was conflicted and in pain. And it was genuine and he was hurt and he couldn’t tell right from wrong but he knew, he really  _ knew _ that something was wrong.  Katara wanted to help him, she tried to help him, and in the end, she trusted him to make the right decision in that final moment. She begged him to help her, to let  Aang go. 

He didn’t.

“So, we don’t even know if  Azula is even on that ship,”  Katara says, looking up again.

“Technically, no,”  Suki says. “But that’s the same ship that came to port here five years ago. It’s got to be her Royal Sloop.”

Sokka cranes his neck to look out the open door. “She sure does like to make a statement. Look at that thing. It’s a gold-plated monster compared to the other ships out there.”

“The other ships are courier vessels and fishing boats. They come in and out every few weeks to bring supplies to the Fire Nation forts on the islands off the coast.”

“Just makes her warship stand out even more,”  Katara says. “It’s even bigger and gaudier than  Zuko’s ship was.”

Toph adds, “Guess she doesn’t care if people know she’s coming.”

“I wouldn’t either if I was her,”  Suki says. 

“So, what’s the plan then?”  Sokka asks. 

Suki rolls her shoulders, popping her back as she turns her gaze back out the door and towards the docks. “For now,” she says. “We wait.”


	5. Ty Lee II

Ty Lee sits squished between Mai and a large crate in the lowest level of the small ship, her knees pulled to her chest and her shoulders pressed with pain; arms wrapped around herself to minimize her size in a conscious effort to make sure Mai is as comfortable as possible. Not that Mai’s any more comfortable than she is herself but, it makes her feel better to know she’s at least attempting.

For the most part, it’s been a quiet passage. Mai has nothing to say other than idle complaints and Ty Lee is unsure of how to carry a conversation when the only thing she can think to talk about is a guessing game of, “what do you think is in that crate, Mai?” A game of which she’s one hundred percent certain Mai has absolutely no interest in playing at all. So, they sit squished and silent, with nothing but the flickering of a lantern and the creaking of the crates between them.

She shifts slightly, wiggling a bit with anxious anticipation, and Mai rolls her eyes and scoffs the way she always does, finally breaking the silence when Ty Lee resettles by asking, “How much longer do we have to be cooped up down here?”

Ty Lee smiles, “I think  we’ll be docking  soon ,” she realizes, feeling a shift in the way the boat below them is moving. “Feels like we’re slowing down.”

“The next time  Azula asks us to do something like this,” Mai says. “Just kill me.”

Ty Lee giggles and wraps her arms around Mai’s shoulders. “What would I ever do without you?”

“Do you really want to know?”

Ty Lee pretends to think on this for a moment and then says, “Nope. I really don’t.”

She hangs on Mai for a few moments, letting the silence fall around them again as they wait for word from the ship's crew that they’ve arrived at port and they can finally get off this tiny, cramped boat. She half expects Mai to shrug her off in an act of annoyed disgust, but she never does. She lets Ty Lee hang off her with little more than an eye roll, and then resettles into the space she has and waits silently with that usual dead eyed, annoyed look of hers.

More time passes, and Ty Lee wiggles her toes, sits on her hands, bounces up and down by flexing her fingers, kicks her feet into the air, and even starts to whistle a tune or two to distract herself from the endless wait. Actions of which all seem to grate Mai’s nerves because after a few moments, Mai’s nails are digging into Ty Lee’s knee to pin her down and she’s almost doing a  Zuko like growl in her direction.

“Do you have to do that?” Mai asks.

“No,” Ty Lee says. 

“Then do me a favor and stop.”

Finally, a boy with a thin frame and a hooked nose comes down to retrieve them. He raises a questioning eyebrow at their predicament, then swallows thickly and stammers out, “We’ve arrived, Lady Mai, Lady Ty Lee.” 

Ty Lee jumps up and onto her feet, stretching her arms high above her head and twisting her torso left and right. “See,” she says to Mai as she twists again and rolls back her scapula. “Told you we were  nearly there.”

Mai sighs and says nothing, but she does stand up and shake her arms a bit, twisting and popping her joints at their newfound freedom to move around again.

Ty Lee falls in line behind Mai, letting the other woman take the lead as they march up the wooden stairs and onto the ships deck. The sky is bright and blue with hardly a cloud in the sky and the sun is bright and high with midmorning morning light. She spots  Azula’s ship across the shipyard, and points to it for Mai to see with a giddy smile she doesn’t even try to hide. 

Mai says, “We’re supposed to wait here for her signal,” immediately killing Ty Lee’s mood, and she pouts dramatically at her friend for ruining her fun.

“Where do you think  Azula is?” Ty Lee asks, looking around. 

The port is rather small, at least compared to the ones she’s seen in the Fire Nation, with room enough for a dozen or so ships.  Azula’s Sloop is the biggest ship by a large margin, and Ty Lee immediately understands what  Azula meant by using it to cause a commotion. It’s hard to miss, and plenty of locals have gathered around the vicinity to point and gawk at its presence.

“Looks like she’s talking to the locals,” Mai says, pointing to a cluster of people where in  Azula stands at the center. She’s dressed in her armor and her hair is perfect as always. Her smile is practiced and sleek, nothing like the one Ty Lee is used to in private but exactly what she’s used to seeing in public; fake and controlled and manipulative and powerful. She seems to be talking with one person in particular, but there’s tons of people surrounding them, all trying to get a look at the Heiress to the world. 

Zuko is with her, standing a few feet away with as much attention on him as his sister. But instead of playing a part of respectable, approachable and happy to be there,  Zuko is scowling. His arms are crossed over his armored chest and his frown is etched so deeply into his features he might not ever be able to smile again. His arms are covered, his hands tucked underneath his arms so that his tattoos don’t show. He looks uncomfortable and unhappy, but when a small child runs forward and breaks through the crowd to point and shout at him with a happy smile, his anger cracks, and something softer begins to show through.

“They’re popular,” Ty Lee says with a smile.

“Who cares,” Mai says, uninterested. She leans against the railing of the ship and folds her arms over her chest, decidedly looking away from  Azula and  Zuko . “The sooner that crowd breaks, the sooner we get off this ship.”

She’s not wrong, but Ty Lee can’t help but enjoy seeing  Azula interact with her subjects, even if it is with a practiced falsity. Normally the royal siblings keep to themselves in the palace, really only ever coming out into the world if Mai or Ty Lee ask them to. They don’t particularly like people, neither  Azula or  Zuko ; but to be fair, their father doesn’t seem to be keen on people either. Maybe it’s a family thing. Still, seeing  Azula interact in a way that isn't making threats or demands, it brings a sort of warmness to Ty Lee that she can’t explain. She knows it fake. She knows  Azula is playing whatever roll she must to do her job and do it effectively, but still, the feeling remains. 

Ty Lee joins Mai along the railing, leaning her forearms into the metal and kicking her toes against the iron floor as she watches the royal siblings, waiting for something that might resemble a signal. That’s when she notices. “Look,” Ty Lee says, pointing. “That house over there.”

Mai rolls her head to Ty Lee and squints in the direction Ty Lee is pointing. “What,” she asks dully.

“Why is that woman hanging laundry when the entire rest of the town is gathered around  Azula ?”

“I don’t know,” Mai says. “Maybe she doesn’t care?”

Ty Lee frowns. “She looks like she’s talking to someone but... I don’t see anyone with her.”

“Maybe she’s talking to herself. You do that all the time.”

She shakes her head. “No,” she says. “I don’t think so. I think  Azula was right. The resistance is here. And she’s part of it.” 

* * *

Ty Lee pulls herself up onto the roof of a building then turns back to look at Mai, of whom she’s left behind on the ship. She smiles and then signals with her thumb that everything is going well. Mai does nothing to signal back, however, probably because she is still ticked with her for breaking  Azula’s orders in the first place.  Or maybe it’s just because that’s the type of person Mai is. It could easily be either, or both. 

She doesn’t let it bother her and quickly  brings her attention back to scampering over the rooftops unnoticed.  It almost feels good to do something like this with her body again, to use her skills and be useful to  Azula and the crown.  After leaving the circus, she never really even thought about going back.  Maybe, she thinks as she flips over a one roof and onto another, she should look in to acrobatics again. Once this is all over, of course. 

Instead of acrobatics, Ty Lee put all her time and  energy into  Azula when  she  came back from their last mission in the Earth Kingdom ; doing her bidding, serving the fire nation,  being a friend,  a lover. It isn’t what she thought she would be doing with her life , but she doesn’t regret it  either. She’s still active and limber, still taking life one happy day at a time, still able to maintain a bright, pink aura. She’d like to think that  Azula’s aura is better too.  That she’s had some sort of positive effect on the woman, even if it’s small. 

Ty Lee jumps to the next building and slides down the slanted  roofing , jumping off and landing  between two closely packed houses.  Crouching, she walks on the balls of her feet through the patches of grass and dirt and peaks her head around the corner.  She spots  Azula across the way,  Zuko not far behind. They’re  walking down the fish market street, inspecting the products and chatting idly with one another, making their presence known in an attempt to draw out enemy attention . She watches  Azula pick up a fish by the tail and verbally berate a fisherman before tossing the fish onto the ground and stomping away. 

She winces at this, able to clearly imagine the harsh words  Azula had in store for the unsuspecting fisherman, but Ty Lee shakes her head and turns her focus, determined not to let herself get distracted from her goals. Following  Azula ’s path  from  the  shadowy shelter of the  clustered buildings, Ty Lee scans the area for more suspicious activity.  What she finds is a bush that looks trampled and mangled and as she approaches it she catches sight of three familiar faces racing quietly out the window of the house nearest the suspicious laundry woman. 

Ty Lee pulls herself back up onto the  roof and ducks behind the pointed peaks . She peeks her head over, eyes scanning the worn dirt paths from the  Avatar's old allies  to  Azula and  Zuko . They closing in, and fast, and  to top it off  Azula still has given them a signal. She’s still baiting them on her own. 

She runs along the rooftops, keeping pace with the sneaking team. Twice they check over their shoulder, forcing Ty Lee to drop onto her belly and slither along the wooden roofing like snake to keep pace unnoticed. The thing about Ty Lee though, even at her loudest, she’s silent and stealthy as shadow. It like she walks on air rather than the ground, like the wind holds her up and embraces her in its gentle hold. She’s never been able to explain it, why she feels more connected to the wind than the fire, but it's probably a good thing that she can't. Telling  Azula or Mai that sort of crazy talk certainly wouldn’t go over well.

Telling Mai anything she didn’t want to hear, well, that was one thing. Usually if Mai doesn’t want to hear something she just acts as if she never heard it in the first place. She’d probably roll her eyes and change the subject, assume Ty Lee was being strange. She likes to chalk up anything Ty Lee says that doesn’t make perfect sense to her as Ty Lee just being Ty Lee; strange. But  Azula ?  Azula would have questions, demands.  Azula doesn’t understand anything that  isn’t fire because that’s exactly what  Azula is herself; fire. When things don’t go her way, when she hears things she doesn’t want to know or understand, she acts out with violence and pain. She lashes out, an uncontrollable blue fire, the type of rage that even Ty Lee herself can’t avoid.

Thankfully, no one ever asks questions. Her lightness isn’t the focus of her skills; her Chi Blocking is. And she knows that the reason she’s here right now is because of that skill, not her ability to move like a shadow or her connection with auras or simply because  Azula enjoys her company. She might be the Princess’ friend, she might even be more than that on occasion, but she’s only managed to become a friend – become something more – because she’s exceptional. Because she can do things no one else can. 

And because she can do things no one else can, she’s willing to go against her Princess’ direct orders if it means protecting her from a potential threat.

She remembers the three she’s following pretty well. Leading the charge is the blind one; an  earthbender who  Azula said once upon a time could see the world the same way as the  badgermoles . Some sort of vibration thing that doesn’t really make sense to Ty Lee because it involves a close relationship with the ground that she just doesn’t have. She remembers her bending style to be unique and her skills to be, quite frankly, unmatched. Even as a child, she was far more skilled than any adult bender Ty Lee ever encountered during their last visit to the Earth kingdom. Not even the Dai Li matched her potential and raw skill, and they were supposedly the best.

Then there’s the guy, the tallest and most muscular of the three who has no bending abilities , but does have an arsenal of weapons training, both long and short range and of a variety of styles and forms from around the world , of whom she thinks is named  Sokka . She remembers thinking he was cute and, admittedly, he still is. She likes his scruffy beard and the way his blue eyes shine like the ocean under the sun. She also likes his shoulders. They’re very, very nice. 

Taking up the rear is the one who Ty Lee thinks is related to the one called  Sokka , the one who she’s certain is the most dangerous of them all. She’s a  waterbender , a good one too. She’s lean, but muscular, with long hair tied in a loopy bun not entirely dissimilar from the one Ty Lee remembers all those years ago. She’s the only one checking behind them or on the rooftops as they sneak through the city, and she’s the one harshly whispering orders to the other two in front of her. She has one hand constantly hovering over a  waterskin on her hip, as if ready to jump into battle at any moment, and of the three her aura is the darkest and most unbalanced.

Ty Lee remembers her being the one closest to the Avatar, the one who put up the toughest fight in  Aang’s final moments, the one with blood in her eyes. Looking at her now, as she throws her gaze over her shoulder again to scan the rooftops Ty Lee hides upon, that need for blood has deepened to something so vile, it almost reminds her of  Azula that night she took the life of Avatar  Aang . The night Ty Lee feared she might lose her Princess forever.

They hang a sharp right at the woman’s order and  Sokka grabs the club on his back with one hand and a jaw blade dagger in the other as they sneak closer and closer to the unsuspecting royalty of the Fire Nation. Ty Lee flips from one roof to the other, crouches low and climbs up the slanted peak, watching with baited breath as the group whispers something she can’t quite make out amongst themselves.

Ty Lee bites her lip and looks across the way to  Azula and  Zuko . She wants to believe that  Azula is aware of their presence, that she’s baiting them out, because there’s still no signal that Mai and Ty Lee should join them. But she can’t let  Azula face off against these three and anyone else – like the laundry woman – with no one but  Zuko to aid her. They’re both skilled benders,  Azula a master of masters, but these three have been a thorn in  Azula and  Zuko’s sides before. That likely hasn’t changed. If only there was a way to signal to  Azula , a way to let the princess know what she had found without raising suspicion. But there’s nothing she can do. Not alone. Not one against three. Not when  Azula specifically told her to wait on the ship until she was signaled to do otherwise.

She crawls down back behind the roof again and heaves a sigh. "Now what, Ty Lee?” she asks herself, her voice hardly more than a whisper. If only those three would separate. She could track them down, remove them from the equation one by one. She’s good at that sort of thing, sneaking around, and even if it’s been a few years since she’s had to do it, she knows she still can. The problem is, she can’t take out all three at once. She can’t raise any alarms. That would put Mai,  Zuko ,  Azula , and all these innocent people in danger. And they aren’t here to cause casualties or disruptions on the already fragile relationship between the Fire Nation and the newly conquered mainland. They’re here to make that relationship better. And the best way to do that is to make sure these three are seen as villainous and vile. To make sure that if anyone does any damage, its them. 

Ty Lee wants to slide off the roof, get closer somehow; but if what she remembers about the  Earthbender is accurate, she’ll pick up her presence the instant her feet touch the ground. Instead she peaks her head over the roof again and watches as  Sokka points and  Katara shakes her head and points somewhere else. They’re obviously arguing about the best point of impact, and Ty Lee readies herself for the moment they finally choose to separate. 

It takes a few moments, but the  earthbender finally charges off with an order from the  waterbender .  Sokka is the second to go, and Ty Lee decides to make him her first target. 

She’s about to slide down from the roof and stalk her prey when  Azula’s eyes finally scan upward to the roofs and align with her own. Ty Lee smiles awkwardly, wiggling her fingers with an innocent wave as  Azula’s eyes narrow in anger. Ty Lee points first below her, then right, then behind her and  Azula’s eyes widen the slightest amount and narrow again as she dips her chin in a single, understanding nod. Ty Lee gives  Azula a thumbs up, points again behind her and  Azula looks to  Zuko . She watches the Princess place a hand on  Zuko’s shoulder and lean into his ear, and Ty Lee takes this as a sign that she’s clear to pursue. 

Ty Lee leaps across the rooftops, slides down the shingled paneling and presses her feet into the ground with the softest of thuds.  She can feel a smile tugging at the corners of her lips as she frolics  down the dirt alleyway and around the corner.  She hates fighting, but she loves the rush that comes  from it. She relishes the way her heart pounds in her chest, the way her blood pumps adrenaline in her veins.  She missed this feeling,  this excitement, and while she’d rather be back in the Fire Nation , she can’t deny the simple fact that she’s smiling all the same. 

She slinks in behind  Sokka , watching as he  tucks himself into a bush and signals something to someone Ty Lee can’t see.  Still smiling and still unnoticed, she reaches out and taps the man’s shoulder. 

He turns and  looks at her with those wide, blue eyes, and Ty Lee smiles brightly and says with a twinkle of her fingers, “Hey cutie,  remember me?”

He opens his mouth, but Ty Lee is faster. Her knuckles drive into the crook of his neck and down his spine; soft, gentle nudges that strike deep into the tissue and block the flow of Chi, temporarily paralyzing her enemies and leaving them helpless on the floor. 

Sokka’s eyes roll to look up at her as he falls over, the attacks to his spine rending his entire body useless and limp. “You,” he manages with a voice of scorn and disdain, but Ty Lee strikes him again in the neck, just below his Adam’s apple to render his speech as useless as his body.

She waves at him again, and rocks onto her toes with delight. “Aw,” she coos. “You do remember me. How sweet.”


	6. Azula I

“On our left,” Zuko whispers harshly in her ear. “It’s that Kyoshi Warrior.” 

Azula’s eyes dart left and scan the woman clad in simple rags. She’s definitely familiar. Zuko’s right, a Kyoshi Warrior without the old Avatar inspired garb. She’s covert, hidden in plain sight. Azula thinks to herself, an admirable attempt, but it’s not good enough. 

“Ty Lee’s on it,” Azula whispers back. 

“Can she really take them all out?” 

Azula nods. “She can take most of them if she’s quiet.” 

“So,” Zuko says. “Should I expect a fight then?” 

“With whoever's left.” 

Zuko nods and they go back to listening to the blabbering local tell them all about the towns exports and the way it contributes to the Fire Nation Empire. It's a boring, time wasting venture, but it provides them with the cover and protection they need to be able to scout out the town and any threats that might be lurking in the shadows. It's unlikely that these resistance fighters, the last allies of the Avatar, would go as far as to strike them when an innocent life could so easily wind up lost in the action. So Azula clings to her chatty local, using him like the human shield he is. 

“What about Mai?” Zuko asks, looking over his shoulder. “She’s still on that boat.” 

Azula rolls her eyes and turns lazily towards the ship in question. Mai is leaning on the railing, watching from a distance with a look of disinterest on her eyes. Azula sticks out her hand, her palm facing the sky, and she ignites a blue flame within her clawed fingers long enough for Mai to take visible notice. She extinguishes the fire in her palm and turns back to Zuko. “She should be joining us shortly,” Azula tells him. 

Again, she turns back to the chatty local and she lazily follows behind him as he talks about their textiles and ‘ultra-fine’ silks. Whatever that means. She feigns interest in his words, keeping him talking and keeping him close as she continues to scan the city for any sort of activity unbecoming of a loyal portside town. 

Finally, when they reach the end of the main road, the local runs out of things to talk about. “Well,” he says, his old voice shaking. “That’s just about everything we do here. It’s an honor that the Fire Nation has taken such an interest in our town. I hope I was able to do it justice, Princess.” 

Zuko growls with impatience and Azula flicks her hair with her index finger. “Thank you for the tour,” she tells him. “My brother and I would like too around some more, but you’re free to go.” 

“Of course, Princess Azula, Prince Zuko.” He bows deeply and takes a step backward. “Whatever you need. Whatever you like. Just say the word.” 

Zuko waves him off says, “We’ll find you. Don’t find us.” and at long last, they’re finally alone. 

Azula turns to Zuko, her arms folded over her armored chest and her weight decidedly pressed into her left heel. “Head count,” she tells him. 

Zuko clicks his tongue against his teeth. “Six,” he tells her. 

“I saw eight,” Azula says. “How many are familiar?” 

“Just the one.” 

“That Kyoshi girl?” 

“Yeah.” 

Azula frowns. “And is she a threat?” 

Zuko says, “Alone? No. But the Kyoshi numbers are in the dozens. Even with half their rank here—” 

“We’ve miscounted,” Azula finishes. 

Zuko nods and looks over the rooftops, scanning the town. “Are you sure about Ty Lee?” 

“Positive,” Azula says. “She’ll take the majority of them out, we’ll handle the rest.” 

All there is for them to do at this moment is find a proper battleground and wait. She eyes a clearing through the streets, something she judges to be the town square, and points in that direction for Zuko to follow her. 

The square is rather bland; as suspected of such a tiny town, but the buildings are spaced apart enough to minimize damage from any type of attack and open enough that no one would be able to sneak up on the unnoticed. There’s a statue of some Earth Kingdom guy in the center of the square, and to fill her time, Azula approaches the Statue and observes its construction. 

“Milu Lohong,” she reads aloud. 

“Wonder what he did,” Zuko says, still looking around and unable to focus his attention enough to be discrete. 

“Says he’s the founder of this town. An Earthbender who built homes along the ocean for fisherman to protect their hauls from the storms.” 

“Wow,” Zuko says, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “How interesting.” 

“Shut up and look busy,” Azula chastises. “We’ve got eyes on our backs.” 

Zuko spins on his heels and then back around. He decides to occupy his time looking at windchimes hanging off the roof of a nearby building, flicking at them with his finger and listening to the gentle plink of notes it emanates. 

Azula rolls her eyes and continues to inspect the statue. She has faith in Ty Lee, even if the woman did go against her direct orders. In truth, she can’t say she’s upset. A covert team is best extinguished by a woman who moves with such grace and fluidity she might as well be the wind itself. A shadow to take out the shadows, though Ty Lee could never be a shadow. She’s far too sunny dispositioned for that. 

She doesn’t need to pay attention to know what Ty Lee is doing; she can see it in her mind, the way she flips and twists over buildings and fences, the way she cartwheels and dances on her toes, the way she presses her knuckles into soft flesh. She can imagine each and every poorly hidden Kyoshi Warrior falling to the ground, paralyzed and useless from Ty Lee’s touch almost as well as she can imagine the way she’ll smile at her when she’s finished the task. Thinking about it – about how she can almost hear as each body is dropped, as Ty Lee turns and leaps off to another target, as the number of enemies they’re about to face is dwindled down to little more than a handful by Ty Lee’s skilled attacks – oh, does it bring the best type of smile to her face. 

“Good work, Ty Lee,” she says when the woman lands behind her. She attuned her ears to Ty Lee’s nearly silent movements years ago, so well in fact that she knows exactly how many paces separate them. 

Azula feels Ty Lee’s smile on the back of her neck; that proud, beaming delight, and she turns her gaze just enough to bring Ty Lee into view. 

Ty Lee is shorter than her by approximately two inches, but the difference is made greater by the soles of Azula’s shoes. She still wears pink (her favorite color) and her hair is still long and braided despite it being several inches shorter than it once was in their youth. What has changed about Ty Lee is the softness of her features. Age has defined them some; angled her jaw and sharpened her cheekbones. But despite the changes in her face, her smile has always been the same. That same smile she’s known all her life. 

Mai approaches the group in the same moment, and at last the four of them are together, ready to face whatever it was Ty Lee managed to miss, or couldn’t take out on her own. 

“What’d I miss?” Mai asks as she joins the group. 

“Nothing yet,” Azula says, sparking fires into her palms and smiling wickedly at the joys of the heat in her hands and power in her fingertips. “In fact, you’re just in time to play.” 

She steps forward, sliding into a battle-ready stance and drags her foot through the dirt to position herself towards an alleyway. “I know you’re there,” she says. “Come out and face me.” 

Out from the shadows emerged the blind earthbender and her friend, that water tribe insect. “You shouldn’t have come here,” says the blind one. 

“We’ve waited five years for this,” says the waterbender. 

Azula shrugs. “Five years of planning your revenge and I’m still stronger than you. How pathetic.” She turns to Zuko and points to one of the two, not caring which one her finger lands on. “You take that one.” 

The waterbender smiles and says, “Sounds perfect.” 

Azula meets the smile with one of her own, a bud of excitement building within her. “Ooo,” she says with a playful tone. “She sounds feisty, Zuko; just your type. Promise me you won’t have too much fun.” 

“Shut up, Azula,” Zuko tells her. 

Azula, still pleased with herself, turns to look at the earthbender. “Mai, Ty Lee. You take whatever’s left of the Kyoshi Warriors. I’ll play with this one.” 

Earthbenders are boring, predictable, and stubborn beyond reason. Fighting them, Azula learned many years ago, takes nothing more than a bit of creativity and a unique ability to frustrate and confuse the opponent. This one, as talented as she may be, is no different. She took down the Dai Li. She conquered Ba Sing Se. She can defeat one rouge earthbender with her hands tied behind her back. 

Azula slides deeper into her battle stance as her comrades run off into battle, a confident smirk playing at her lips as the earthbender slams her heel into the ground and kicks up a block of stone to use as a weapon against her. 

“Be careful now,” Azula warns. “Don’t want to destroy the homes of the innocent, do we?” 

“I’ll break whatever the hell I want,” the earthbender yells back, angry and confident and exactly what Azula wants to see in an opponent worthy of her time. “And I think I’ll start with your face!” 

The stone flies across the square and Azula leaps up as the rock passes through where she once stood. She kicks off the rock, flips in the air and brings her flame engulfed heel down hard in an arc of fire that sends the earthbender stumbling back. She steps forward again, punching the air and blasting angry blue fire from her knuckles that’s blocked with a wall of earth. 

Azula smirks, her head tilting to one side. “Excellent,” she says, feeling excitement rumbling in her bones. “Let’s see you do that again, shall we?” 

There are vibrations beneath her and Azula is forced to jump back and put distance between her and her enemy as jagged stones erupt from the ground in spikes. They chase her down, following her as she flips back a second time and Azula had to adjust her trajectory with a blast of fire to hurl herself to the left in order to avoid collision with the sharp earth stones. 

She lands with a skid, and she notices the way the earthbender’s head turns the instant her feet hit the ground. Another eruption of stone is sent hurling her direction like a shockwave, and again, Azula is forced into a position of defense. She hates being on the defensives. 

Azula dodges the stones and faces another wave. She weaves between them, ducks under the flying rocks hurled behind them, and maneuvers out of the path of a sudden trap hole the bender had pulled into existence with a stomp of her foot. 

She needs to get the higher ground, get somewhere where the bender can’t track her with the same clarity, but that’s easier said than done when she’s dancing around blocks of spiked stone. She twists around, narrowly avoiding another of the earthbender’s attacks and realizes her positioning. Reaching up, Azula jumps and grabs onto the roofing of the building behind her, and using a technique not entirely unfamiliar to Ty Lee, she flips her legs over her head and swings around so that her feet connect with the roof. 

“Get down here and fight me,” the earthbender tells her in frustration. 

Azula leaps from one roof to the other, runs along the top of the next building and then onto the roof of a third. Her foot connects with the third roof and she twists her ankle and pushes off again. Her heel connects with the bender’s back and she flies into the middle of the town square, skidding across the ground and kicking up a trail of dirt behind her. She dips down low and bring her arms up in two crossing arc that bring trails of scorching blue fire to life at her fingertips. The flames roar as they hurl across the space between her and her prey, and she watches as the earthbender rolls over and attempts to kick up a shield in time. 

She charges after the fires, her feet connecting with the slanted slate of earth used in defense of her strike, and she kicks off from it, flipping over and punching fires from her knuckles down unto the blind bender. She hears the woman scream, as she lands, and the earth makes a familiar groan as it’s pulled over like a blanket to extinguish Azula’s fire. 

With a moment of time now in her hands, albeit a small one but a moment none the less, Azula scans the field. 

Zuko is in the midst of a heated battle with the water tribe girl to her right. She watches Zuko lunge forward, bringing towering waves of fire from his palms and up towards the air in a show of offensive force but the waterbender whose name Azula doesn’t care to remember meets the flames with waves of equal force from the waters she controlled around her. They clash with an explosion, ripples of steam dissipating in the air with a loud and angry hiss. She watches the waterbender pull the steam back into her possession and push it again into a blast of flames from Zuko’s fiery fingers, each clash resulting the same extinguishing steam as the last. 

To her left, up on the roofs, Mai and Ty Lee are chasing down a woman, knives flying and bodies flipping and twisting in the air. She catches sight of Ty Lee summersaulting in the air, her hands pressing into Mai’s shoulders and launching her up even higher as she twists herself around and comes crashing down on the Kyoshi Warrior. 

She turns back to her own fight, the gears in her mind turning as she plays out the various scenarios in her head. She has the upper hand, this fight in the bag. The question is: should she? 

Azula crosses her arms over her chest and smiles as the earthbender pulls herself to her feet. “Hmm,” she drawls, watching her opponent ready herself for battle again. “I wonder.” 

“You won’t have time to wonder when I’m finished with you,” her opponent threatens. 

Still smiling, Azula flicks her bangs with her finger and slides back into stance. “Zuko,” she calls over her shoulder as she stares down her opponent. “Do you trust me?” 

“Not a chance,” Zuko growls as he blocks a whip of water with a wall of fire. 

“Smart man,” Azula says, taking a step back. “Switch opponents with me.” 

Zuko dodges another lash of water, and then the spikes of ice that shoot out from the whip at the Waterbender’s twist of her fingers. “Whatever you say,” he says, jumping backward so he and Azula’s shoulder blades are pressed against one another. 

Azula says, “Follow my lead, little brother,” and They both take a step to the left, spinning around and changing opponents, then step forward and break the contact between them. Now staring down who Azula has deduced to be the leader of the group, she puts her plan into action. 

“Fine then. I’ll take care of you, too,” says then waterbender, lashing the water whip against the ground with a snap of wrist. 

“Will you?” Azula ponders, a dark interest piquing. “I’d like to see that.” 

Azula took a daring step forward, a blast of fire shooting from her pointed fingers. It collides with the water, a hissing steam extinguishing both their bending. She hurls another wave of fire, dipping into a low stance and sweeping across the ground into another, a third wave of fire zapping to life from the tips of her fingers. 

“I don't know what’s more boring,” Azula says as a fourth blast of fire pelts against the waterbender’s dwindling defense. “Waiting for your little team to show your face, or how unbelievably predictable you are.” 

Her opponent pulls at the water, sliding her stance around and changing the wall into sleek stream that she hurls towards Azula with a push. The water cracks like a whip as it clashes against Azula’s arm, engulfing the Princess’ non dominant side in the waterbender’s grip. 

Azula looks at her arm, then to the waterbender. “I told you” she says, gesturing to the watercuff around her forearm. “Predictable.” 

It’s then that in lopes the other water tribe fellow. He’s wielding a club in his hands, yelling like an idiot as he fights with his body to overcome Ty Lee’s paralysis inducing strikes; strikes that appear to be wearing off. He swings the club at Zuko, but it’s easily dodged and the warrior goes stumbling across the battlefield. Spinning as he tries to maintain balance, the warrior hurls a boomerang towards Azula. 

It whirls through the air, and Azula smirks with confidence as it curves towards her. She’s about to dodge the strike but there's a snaping sound, a stinging pain resonating from her forearm, and all at once she notices that both her arms are now bound by watercuffs. The boomerang slams into her back, and Azula bites down on her cheeks so hard to prevent herself from whelping in pain that she can taste blood on her tongue. 

From one direction, a storm of blades rushes past her from a nearby rooftop. The warrior manages to unsheathe his bone knife and block most of the knives from reaching him with a metallic clang of the clashing weapons, but the spray of Mai’s attack was wide and encompassing and several points still found their way into the fumbling warrior’s flesh. 

Azula’s eyes trace the knifes back to Mai, who's standing now next to Ty Lee in the square, their Kyoshi Warrior enemies laying along a winding path on the rooftops, motionless and moaning. Ty Lee smiles at her, presses her hands proudly into her hips. Mai rolls her eyes and draw out more blades from their hiding places within her sleeves. 

The warrior hisses in pain and stumbles back, his pained yelp echoing off the roof tops. In response, the watertribe woman yells, “Sokka,” as he falls to the ground in pain, and for a moment, Azula thinks she might release her to go to the side of the warrior named Sokka. Instead, the woman pulls on the water, restraining Azula’s arms, her grip tightening and further binding her in the watery whips. 

“Sokka, are you okay?” yells the earthbender from her fight with Zuko. 

“Don’t worry about me,” he yells back, slowly plucking one of the knives out from his thigh with an elongated hiss. “Just hurry up!” 

Hurry up? The words ring curiously in Azula’s ears. She tilts her head to one side and looks at the woman who holds her hostage. “Oh,” she says, interest piquing again. “You have a plan do you? How’s that working out for you?” 

“Better than yours,” she says, taunting. “Toph, do it now!” 

Azula smiles something wicked, delighted to see their plan come to fruition. 

A prison of rock and stone erupts from the ground, encasing her legs up to her knees. She hears Zuko growl with frustration, yelling “What the hell,” as he blasts what she can only assume is a similar rocky prison with fistfuls of furious fire. Mai and Ty Lee are similarly bound, and while Ty Lee is trying to pull herself out, Mai is simply standing there, accepting her fate. 

“Got you,” the water woman says, smiling. 

Slowly, Azula raises her cuffed hands and with a sly, cunning smile she says, “You win.” 

* * *

The earthbender wraps metal around each of their wrists in crude, make shift cuffs that completely cover their hands and weigh a hefty sum. Similarly, their legs are cuffed with chains and they’re bound together in a line; Mai in the front, then Ty Lee, Azula and Zuko in the rear. 

“Katara, why is she smiling?” asks the one she knows now to be called Sokka. 

“Oh, me?” Azula toys. “I’m just enjoying the show.” 

The Water Tribe woman, Katara, shrugs. “Once she sees what we have in store for them, it won’t last.” 

Azula has to admit, she likes this new, darker Katara. She’s a lot more entertaining and unpredictable than the optimistic mother hen she had been as a child. 

Zuko leans forward and whispers harshly in her ear, “I hope you know what you’re doing, Azula,” and if she could wave a dismissive hand at her brother’s worry, she would have. 

Instead, she shrugs, leans her head back and whispers back, “Patience, Zuzu.” 

“Hey,” Sokka calls, pointing his bone knife at the two of them. “Cut it out! No scheming.” 

“Eat shit,” Zuko tells Sokka with a hiss. 

“Let them talk,” says the earthbender. “They’re not getting out of those cuffs anytime soon.” 

“Toph’s right,” says Katara. “They can talk all they want. It doesn’t change the fact that they’re _our_ prisoners now.” 

“You do have them in metal cuffs forged by the only metalbender on the planet,” says the still recovering Kyoshi Warrior. Azula can tell Ty Lee’s strikes are still affecting her by the way the left side of her face struggles to emote and the tremble in her fingers. “Even if they did escape, without you they’re never getting their hands free.” 

“Speaking of,” Katara says, walking down the line and inspecting each of them like they’re some sort of prize. “We should get them back to base. Show them where they’ll be living from now on.” 

Azula smirks; she knew they wouldn’t kill them. They’re far too valuable alive to be any use to them dead. And now, just as she had hoped, they’re taking her right to the heart of the Resistance. What fools they are. Even with the burlap bags in the Kyoshi Warrior’s hands that she knows will go over her head to keep her from learning the location of the base itself, they’re giving her everything she could ask for and more. 

“Right,” says the Kyoshi Warrior. “Let’s get moving then.” 

On cue, Katara and the Kyoshi Warrior begin pulling sacks over their heads. Azula’s senses are engulfed in must and darkness and while she can feel a choking sensation building in her throat as she struggles to get a clear breath of air, she refuses to let these idiots hear her gasping. Instead she sucks in a deep breath through her nose, exhales through her mouth, and leans forward so that Ty Lee can hear her. 

“See you on the other side, Ty Lee,” she says, hoping the woman can hear the way she’s smiling with excitement and anticipation. Hoping she knows the confidence exuding from her form despite their current predicament as prisoners of the resistance. 

Ty Lee sucks in a sharp breath that makes Azula smile with pleasure, and then she says back, “See you soon, my Princess.” 

* * *

They’re marched for hours, stumbling over tree roots and stones, getting yanked and pulled left and right. It’s dizzying and confusing and Azula’s lost any hope of her internal navigation giving her even the slightest clue about the direction they’re traveling in. 

For a while, she was convinced they were headed north, northwest, but then they zig zagged for a while and were ducked under something with a forceful shove on their heads, trudged waist deep through something thick and wet that reeked of something dead, and then they were turned around, hung a sharp left, trudged some more, curved right, and before Azula could put it all together they were heading in what felt like the direction the came from. 

She feels someone’s hand press on her head and from a few feet ahead of her she heard Sokka say, “Duck if you want to keep your heads.” 

There’s always been a bit of sunlight peeking in through the stitchwork of the scratchy sacks, but as they duck and trudge forward, the sunlight disappears and wet, musty feeling replaces what little warmth she felt on her skin. They begin walking down a winding slope and Azula realizes as they trek further and further down this winding path that they’re now somewhere underground. Not entirely surprising. They are rebels in the Earth Kingdom. Building an underground base would take just a few skilled earth benders and one inconspicuous location to convert. They’ve had years to develop an underground base, and it strikes Azula then that an underground network on the mainland is the only thing that makes any sense at all. 

She assumes it must be massive by this point; endlessly growing to accommodate their every need and every victory. Victories of which have been aplenty in the recent months according to her father. She can only imagine what it might look like, where in the Earth Kingdom this secret underground lair might be. The worst thing about being underground is it’s completely shielded from the sun. She doesn’t like not feeling its white hot on her sleeves and her skin. She doesn’t like her armor being cold to the touch. She doesn’t like knowing that down here there is no natural light, no heat from the sky to fuel her power. 

The colder it gets, the deeper they march, the more she can feel her strength slipping away. Of course, even with a handicap like this, she knows she could fight her way out of this miserable situation if she wanted to. She just needed to want to, and really, she doesn’t. Being here, in this base she might not have ever found on her own, is like an acceleration to her plans she couldn’t have possibly of predicted to go any better in her favor. She’s getting exactly what she’s wants. Exactly what she needs. These idiots just don’t realize it yet. They’re too busy relishing the idea that she’s even capturable at all. That they have these bargaining chips. 

As if her father would ever give into enemy demands over the lives of his children. 

The very thought of that makes her want to laugh out loud. Her father? Choosing his children over his world? He’d much rather pick a new heir unrelated by blood than welcome failures back into his home. Zuko knows it, Azula knows it. Even Ty Lee and Mai know it. No one will come for them. Their only way out is for Azula’s calculations and predictions to go exactly as she plans them to. 

So far, so good. 

Things aren’t exactly as she’s predicted, however that means nothing when you’re able to adapt and overcome the way she and her brother are. Anything that’s thrown at them she knows she will turn into a weapon to bring down this pitiful resistance. She’ll destroy this base from the inside. Take everything from them in one fell sweep. She’ll return home a victor, a soldier unmatched. She will ascend to the throne of the world as an undefeated warlord, a force so terrifying that no one dared to even begin to think about opposing her. And all that begins here, right here, in this dank, musty cave that is to become her prison – her home – until the moment to strike becomes clear and bright as the summer sun. 

They stop somewhat suddenly and Azula listens as the man named Sokka shares an exchange with a new, unfamiliar voice. 

“You got everything ready down there?” he asks. 

“Everything is exactly as you and Master Katara specified. We’re ready for the prisoners when you are.” 

“Good,” Sokka says. “We’ll deposit these two first and then bring them down. Tell the others to get ready.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading and don't forget to come chat with me at https://kiintsugi.tumblr.com/ where i post headcanons, fic ideas, shitposts and nonsense, answer questions and even post unedited excerpts of my writing!  
> also, if you're feeling this, check out my playlist for this fic here https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2OXjLxHLdTk86GemKuRM9z?si=1k4Rmg-RS8eazEHXjKgwyw


	7. Zuko III

Whatever the hell it was  Azula was thinking when she decided to let them get captured by the resistance, she refuses to share it with anyone. 

“Trust me,” she said in the heat of battle, well, something like it. Those magic, coded words she had prepared for him on the ship. The words that told him the plan had changed. That she had something... else... in mind. The thing is, it almost sounded sincere.  _ Trust me. _

Even if she wasn’t,  Zuko knows  Azula wouldn’t let herself get caught without having a plan and, regardless of what she thinks of  Zuko these days, their fates are tied now. They have no choice but to trust each other. Still, he isn’t the only one who is suffering from placing their trust in his sister; and trust, he realizes now, isn’t exactly something that’s going well for them these days.

Neither he nor  Azula have seen Mai or Ty Lee since they separated the benders from the non-benders into different wings of the underground cells, where he and his sister were then separated even further from their crew. He had thought at the time that they would separate them from each other as well; put him and his sister in identical, isolated chambers until someone inevitably cracked and supplied the resistance with more ammunition to use against his father’s empire. Instead, they were placed in a cell together; in what  Zuko believes to be the deepest level of the underground lair.

The isolation from everyone other than his sister is a torture  Zuko never imagined he would be forced to endure, and every moment locked in a stone box with  Azula feels like an eternity. The cell has a small hole in the ceiling where there is near constant blast of frozen air pelting down on them, keeping them docile and non-threatening. For a few days they had relied on their breath of fire to keep them warm, but intense restrictions of food and water eventually caught up to  Zuko , and then, it caught up to  Azula as well. If she still has the ability to practice her breath, she hasn’t shown it in days.

He lost track of time after that. It had been easy to count the minutes thanks to his mastery of breath; the most basic technique in a  firebender’s arsenal. He knew exactly how long his breathing took him: each inhale and exhale precisely counted and marked with tuft of orange flame. Now, all he can do is chatter his teeth and, when the cold becomes too much to bear, sleep. 

But not  Azula . Not that this surprises him. She is as focused, determined, and calculating as she has always been. Their bending may have been temporarily disabled, but they don't call  Azula a prodigy for nothing. Even without her bending, her mind is always at work; plotting, planning. He doesn’t need to ask to know she has been playing out the scenarios in which she would extract her revenge, the ways in which her mysterious plan will unfold. Humiliating and subsequently destroying her enemies has always been  Azula’s favorite game. 

A blast of frozen air pelts down on their skin, coating them with a veil ice before one of the stone walls, for the first time since their capture, drops. 

Katara has changed since the battle in the Catacombs. She has grown at least three inches and her features have become sharp and angled with age and hardships. She has also developed more  muscle, her shoulders and back broader than he remembered. Her muscles only further accent the gentle swell of her hips, wider and more prominent than they had been when he knew her last. Eyes that once saw hope, the very eyes that stilled his fiery rage and saw past the scars of his childhood, now look cold and narrow; merciless like an arctic tundra. 

Her hair is still the same. In fact, it was the only piece of her that carried any sort of resemblance to the girl he once hunted. She has it pulled into some water tribe fashioned, loopy bun, complete with beads and other tribal accents that look borderline uncultured and brutish compared to the sleek styles of women in the Fire Nation, and it's the only part of her left that speaks of the village she once hailed from. She’s replaced her water tribe garb with something more resembling to the Earth Kingdom: patched, dirt emblazoned greens and browns. Neither color compliment her complexion, but thoughts like that are of the mind of a softened prince and not of a seasoned soldier.

She looks at him for a long moment from the doorway, staring down at her royal prisoners with a venomous spite that, in  Zuko’s opinion, rivals the cruelty of his sister. She reaches out, fingers looping and tangling in a hole in his sleeve, and she yanks it away. 

In the cold of the cell,  Zuko tries his best to cover his exposed arm, but  Katara is faster, snatching his wrist and holding his forearm to the light that barely reaches the inside of the cell; the red of his tattoos glowing against the lantern light.

“How does it feel,  _ Avatar Killer _ ? How does it feel to take credit for murdering a child?”

Zuko winces, too tired to twist himself free. He lands with a thud against the stone walls when  Katara discards him with a shove. He can’t tell if she’s actually expecting an answer or if she’s merely pressing him to assert herself over her newfound prisoners. But even if  Zuko actually had the strength to explain himself, he certainly doesn’t have the words. 

Azula hums with amusement across the cell, her mischievous smile hidden behind knees pulled tight against her chest.  Katara , however, seems uninterested in  Azula presence; the vast majority of her rage crashing into  Zuko and he can feel the icy crystals against his back collecting, sharpening and creeping around his skin with every one of her anger filled breaths. 

“Tell me,  Zuko !”  Katara throws her hands down in anger, flooding him with gripping, frozen fingers that pin him against the wall.

He growls, lunging forward against the ice that pinned him, remembering that his body was warmer than ice, even when cold. He can feel the ice dwindling away around his arms, but his strength is too little, and the pace too slow.  Zuko’s breath is fumbling and shaking from the ice; an embarrassment to the royal blood that flows through his veins. But he's cold, so very cold, and the only thought he has – one that runs rampant and savage through his mind – is warmth.

“Cold,” he says with a shake, and  Katara’s expression twists and tightens. 

She flicks her wrist, pulling the ice tighter around him, jagged spikes pressing into his flesh. “If you don’t answer my questions, it’s going to get a whole lot colder than this.”

“I’m serious,”  Zuko manages. “That’s what it feels like. Cold.”

He chances a glance at  Azula , his sister pulled tight into a fetal ball, her breath puffing in hot wisps from behind crossed arms around high knees. He can see her golden glare, those tight, certain eyes, watching him, watching  Katara , and deciphering every second of everything happening within her view.  _ Trust me, _ he hears her say in his head, and somehow – for some reason – her voice steels his resolve again. 

Zuko feels a flash of warmth burst within him and he growls low and harsh as he thrashes against the ice pinning him to the frozen stone wall. “You think I wanted this?” he snaps. “You think I asked for this?”

This can't be what  Katara expected to hear as her expression softens and twists with confusion. A breath later, it hardens again. “I don’t care what you want or don’t want, Avatar Killer.”

Now she’s  _ got  _ to be trying to push his buttons. She wants to make him mad. Oh, will she regret that. 

Azula interjects, finally, with a dull, uninterested. “You should.”

“Why?”  Katara says, taking the bait his sister has set.

Azula shrugs. “Because you’re not cruel enough to do things my way. You don’t have the spine to do what needs to be done. Not to mention how stupid you are when people actually start telling you things. Here my brother is, being an idiot and opening his mouth, and you’re over here not listening to what he has to say.”

Katara lashes out, the ice ripping off  Zuko and crashing into  Azula , causing his sister to burst into laughter as her body is pinned to the cold, frozen stone behind her.

“This is a waste of time,”  Azula says. “Tell me... what do you even plan to do with us? You can’t kill us. We’re of no use to you that way. You can’t keep us here in this cell forever, either. Eventually, you have to do something, don’t you? If you can’t get your answers, what’s your plan then? What are you willing to sacrifice to do what needs to be done?”

“You have no idea what I’m capable of.”

Azula smiles and leans forward as much as her ice-bound body can manage, her golden eyes sparking with daring excitement. “Show me. Show me how far you’re willing to go.”

“ Azula ,”  Zuko says. “Enough.”

“I decide when and what is enough,”  Katara growls as she flicks one arm back to  Zuko and pulls the ice from the wall to make spikes that press into his neck like sharpened steel.

Azula rolls her shoulders and cracks her neck, rocking her head from one side to the other. “Come now,  Katara We both know it's me you want. Not  Zuko .”

“You don’t know anything about me,”  Katara says. “Or what I want.”

Zuko wants to tell her she’s doing exactly what  Azula wants from her. He feels a sense of obligation to it, a duty to warn people when they fall too deep into one of his sister’s sinister traps. But  Katara , even though she was once kind to him, is his enemy. And  Katara , who once saw  through to a part of him he didn’t even know existed, a piece of him he’s spent the past five years trying to burn, sees him as a monster now. The Avatar Killer; the face of the Fire Nation’s power and success. The face of  Azula’s cruelty.

“Let me tell you how this is going to go down,”  Azula says. “You’re going to threaten us, get nothing from us, huff off and blast us with more ice and snow until our lips turn blue and we can’t see straight. Then you’re going to drag us to some room to threaten to torture us for information, but you won’t because, again, you don’t have the spine. But, you’re hoping that separating us and making it  _ seem _ like you’ve gotten your way will get us to turn on each other and tell you everything we know about the Fire Nation defenses in the capital. Instead, you’re going to get nothing. You’ll become frustrated and spend a week trying to figure out what to do with us, all while opening up the perfect opportunity for us to escape; giving me, and by extension my brother that you seem to hate so much, all the information we need about your little hideout.”

Azula continues, “What you  _ should _ be doing, is—”

“Shut up,”  Katara cuts.

“You can’t keep us here forever,”  Azula says. “Remember that when you’re discussing your options with your little gang.”

* * *

Katara ends up doing exactly as  Azula predicted. She fell for  Azula’s cruel words, forgot all about her attempts to force information from  Zuko , and stormed out of the prison cell with more questions than when she arrived. As a result,  Azula has done nothing but smile with smug pleasure since, and the very sight of  Azula’s stupid smug face is starting to gnaw on  Zuko’s nerves.

“Why did you do that?” he asks after the silence becomes too much to bear. “Make her mad like that?”

Azula scoffs as if explaining this to him is some sort of inconvenience, despite the fact that they’re both doing a heaping pile of nothing and have been for what feels like days or weeks (he really  isnt sure anymore). “Because,” she explains. “Water is the natural opposite to fire, yes?”

Zuko nods. 

“Fire is traditionally summoned from anger. We’re taught how to thrive on it from the day we discover our bending. A  waterbender relies on the opposite. They function best when they’re calm.”

Zuko bites his cheeks and looks down at his feet. It makes sense, her logic. As twisted and cruel as it may be.  Katara’s bending, her mind, it’s all weaker if she’s battling with rage. But still, they’re prisoners here. The last thing they should be doing is encouraging their captors to treat them worse.

“Keep the  waterbender angry, break her root, she won’t be a threat.”

“I get that but,”  Zuko pauses, not certain as to why he’s so unsure about what  Azula has done. “It’s our fault  Katara is the way she is now. She was never like this before. She was never...”

“Never what?”  Azula asks, a biting frustration building in her tone. “ Zuko , you shouldn’t care. She’s the enemy. She always has been.”

Zuko purses his lips. “The last time I was in the Earth Kingdom, I learned some things about the Fire Nation that I'm not proud of. We’re not as honorable as we tell ourselves we are. And  Katara , all of them, they’re proof of that.”

Azula clicks her tongue and says “What happens to those who resist us is of no concern to people like us. We have an Empire to run. We don’t have time to care about bruised egos and burned feelings.”

“What’s the point in ruling if the majority of our subjects are afraid of us?”

“The point,  _ Zuko _ , is that fear is the greatest weapon in a ruler’s arsenal. You’d know that if you actually paid attention to our father every once in a while.”

“Fear is  _ his _ weapon,”  Zuko says, thinking to himself,  _ does it have to be ours, too? _

* * *

The next time the wall of the stone prison drops,  Zuko is so cold he hardly notices. 

He feels something warm wrap around his biceps and maybe his feet are dragging along the ice, he doesn’t know. He feels his body move, buts too heavy and frozen for him to have any control. Is he being dragged? Carried? Is he walking? Why isn’t he in cuffs and chains? 

Where are they taking him?

Do they have  Azula too? 

He doesn’t remember. He isn’t sure. 

He’s pushed and shoved; pulled and twisted. At some point his armor is peeled away from him in tearing cracks and thrown across a room that’s too bright when compared to the darkness of his cell for his eyes to see anything but blinding colors and white light. He feels someone, something, pulling on his arms, yanking off his sleeves. A blast of ice pelts against him, his skin prickling under the blaring cold and his eyes squeezing shut as he shoved forward again. 

Where is he going? What’s happening? Is this what  Azula said would happen? Did she say this would happen?

Another flash of white light, another blast of icy wind and  Zuko’s on his knees now and he doesn’t know how or why, but there’s blood on his scuffed hands and dirt in his wounds and it burns –  oh, fuck,  it burns. Everything burns, so cold and frozen, but burning all the same. He’s desperate for heat, for a burn more familiar. His lips are trembling and his fingers are shaking and he can’t clean the dirt from the cut on his hand because he can’t see, can’t focus, can’t concentrate. 

He’s on his feet again, dragging, walking, he still doesn’t know but he’s tripping and stumbling all the same; he doesn’t know on what, if it's even anything other than his own feet at all. He hears voices, but he can’t make out what they’re saying. His name? His sister’s name? No.  Katara .  Katara’s name. Is  Katara here? No, he can’t hear her voice. What about  Katara ? 

“What’s going on? Where are you taking me?”

He’s pushed again and  Zuko stumbles into another room, landing hard on his knees and tearing the silks of his pants. He can feel the sting of pain on his shins, his knees, where the silks have torn and the rocks have shredded his skin. It’s hot, burning, but cold too. He's still, so, so cold.

Zuko’s eyes open wide, and he sucks in a breath of the warmest air to hit his lungs yet. His eyes slowly begin to adjust. Light bug lanterns hang from the stone walls and illuminate a soft, yellow light throughout the still dark room and there’s tattered banners of green emblazoned with the symbol of the Earth Kingdom hanging from the walls. Unlike his cell, there’s no hole in the ceiling to assault him with ice and snow, and there’s a wooden chair in the center of the room. 

He’s looks down at his hands, his wrists are cuffed together, so are his ankles upon further inspection; rings of iron wrapped tight around his bones. Despite the security in binding him, he’s alone here; nothing but the shadow of his self flickering in the dim light to accompany him. 

Sluggishly,  Zuko straightens his spine and tips his chin to the ceiling, sucking in all the warmth the damp, musty air has to offer. It feels like defrosting, like a layer of skin melting away as his body adjusts to the new environment. He’s hurt, dizzy and disoriented, but the warmth – this tiny ounce of heat – it's what he needs to feel like himself again. 

He stays like this for a long while, afraid that he moves, it’ll all be taken away again; that he’ll suddenly be back in his cold cell with his even colder sister, shivering and frozen. But the longer he stays here, scuffed knees digging into the ground, the more his body begins to respond to the pain of his cuts and bruises. His hands, his knees, they burn and ache and scream with pain and when he finally can’t take it anymore, he falls onto his backside and relieves the pressure from his bleeding knees.

Zuko looks at his tattooed arms, at the red arrows that trail down his limbs, and he sighs deeply. His hands fall to floor, and he looks up at one of the lanterns feeling defeated and broken. 

“You think I asked for this?” he repeats with a weak gruff, thinking back to the way  Katara looked at him; the disgust and anguish in her eyes. The same look that the Lee had given him when he discovered that he was a  firebender all those years ago. 

Zuko pulls his knees to his chest and buries his face. He hated that look. It was worse than the look of pity and disappointment he had spent years running away from. It was worse than the feeling of guilt in the pit of his stomach when his father finally welcomed him home.

Behind him, he hears the rumble of  earthbending as the stone door drops. He doesn’t bother to crane his neck and see who it is. He already knows.

“ You ,” he greets coldly.

“ Zuko ,”  Katara says back. She walks around so that she’s facing him, staring down at him with her hands on her hips, that necklace of hers that he once returned to her glimmering in the lantern light. “You ready to finally cooperate?”

He scoffs, his eyes rolling so far in the back of his head he’s surprised they didn’t get stuck. “ Azula told you how this is going to go. Why even bother trying?”

She kneels down so that she’s eye level with him and says, “Because you’re better than her,  Zuko . Deep down, you know it, too.”

Zuko lifts his gaze to meet hers; his golden eyes drowning in the ocean blue of hers. There’s something familiar about it. How he’s trapped underground with no one but  Katara to talk to. The memories scorch his mind and he shakes his head, throwing them away. “No,” he tells her. “I’m not.”

Katara makes a frustrated sound and pushes off her knees, standing up straight again and crossing her arms over her chest. “You know, your sister actually gives good advice. Once I thought about what you said the other day, actually listened, I realized something: she was stopping you from revealing the truth.”

“She was toying with you,”  Zuko says flatly. “A word of advice: don’t read into it.”

“You’re not completely wrong,”  Katara says. “But you’re not completely right either.”

Zuko’s eyes follow  Katara as she walks around the room. “I’d say between the two of us, I know my sister a hell of a lot better than you do.”

Katara smirks. “And right now, I’d say I know you a hell of a lot better than you know yourself.”

“Oh really?”  Zuko challenges

“Really.”

“Prove it.” 

Katara says, “I don’t need to. You’ve already proved it yourself,” and the whole thing has  Zuko remembering how much his head hurts.

He growls and turns his head, burring his chin again behind his knees. He stares into the wall, watching the light bugs fly around in their glass prison, wondering where it is his sister, Ty Lee, and Mai all are about now. Are they being questioned too? Just like  Azula predicted they would? Or is it just him? Because he’s been designated as the weakest, the most likely to crack. 

“You’re wasting your time,” he says. “I won’t tell you anything.”

“I don’t think you know anything,”  Katara says, a hint of challenge in her voice that makes  Zuko’s blood boil. “I think trying to get information out of you is a waste of my time. Because that’s what you still are to your father – even after claiming  Aang’s death as your own and tattooing it into your skin – a waste of his time.”

“Shut up,”  Zuko tells her.

“You walk around the world as the Avatar Killer, a hero of the Fire Nation. But you know as well as I do that those tattoos aren’t a hero’s mark. They’re shame. Your shame. Because that’s what you are  Zuko ; shameful and ashamed”

“Shut up!”

“Prove me wrong,” she dares, leaning forward so she’s hovering over him like a mother scolding a child. “I dare you. Hell, I double dare you. Prove me wrong.”

He doesn’t know if he won’t or if he can’t, but he does know he has nothing to say to  Katara anymore. Not that he had anything to say in the first place. Nothing except, “Your eyes. They’re different than they used to be. You’re different than you used to be. And it’s my fault.”

This seems to take  Katara by surprise, and she blinks several times before pressing her lips together in thought. She reaches across from herself, pulls at the water in the  waterskin on her hip and forms an oblong ball in her hands. “Here,” she says, lowering the ball over his scuffed hands and knees. “You’re bleeding.”

There’s a gentle glow, and the stinging pain in his hands and knees pricks and pulls under the water, his skin stitching itself back together. After a moment, the water ceases to glow and  Katara pushes it back into the  waterskin at her hip, looking down at her work with a soft smile. 

Zuko looks at his knees, at the pink, shining skin that was once torn and bleeding, then up at  Katara . “Why?” he asks.

Katara smiles. “I told you,  Zuko ,” she says with a tone that reminds him of the girl he spoke with in the catacombs all those years ago; the girl who trusted enough to touch his scar. “You’re better than you think you are.”


	8. Ty Lee III

A sharp wave of pain shoots through her as her elbow hammers against stone. A forearm presses against her throat, another pressing into her chest and suddenly, Ty Lee can’t breathe. 

“That’s enough!”

Ty Lee slumps to the ground, dizzy with pain. 

“We don’t have to worry about those two. They don’t know anything; they just follow orders.”

Ty Lee pries her eyes open. The room is a hazy mess. She sees the yellow glow of nearby torches scrape across the room and meld with shadowed figures and the browns of stone as the voices echo off the earthy walls. One of the shadows crosses through another but her eyes soon fail her; eyelashes turning to iron. 

She curls in on herself, wrapping her hand around the splitting pain in the opposite arm. Her head is pounding with a similar pain, but moving her arms any more than she already has makes her swell with the urge to vomit.  _ This is nothing _ , she tells herself, choking back the pain.  _ Nothing at all. _

When Ty Lee opens her eyes again, there's someone crouching over her. “What are you doing here?” Ty Lee groans as she rolls herself onto her good elbow and pushes herself upright.

Suki smiles, tucking a few stray locks of hair behind her ears. “They weren’t supposed to get physical. I’m sorry it took me this long to check on you. If I would have known, I would have stopped it sooner.”

Ty Lee pushes herself back and leans against the rear stone wall, still gripping her elbow.

Suki frowns as Ty Lee backs away, but she doesn’t push to close the difference between them either. Instead she reaches across her body and pulls a  waterskin from her side. Careful to make sure Ty Lee is watching,  Suki shakes the  waterskin , unscrews the cork, and then takes a swig of its contents. She wipes her face with the back of her hand and then gingerly offers the  waterskin across the prison cell to Ty Lee. “Here,” she says. “Please. Drink.”

Ty Lee squints at the  Waterskin , scanning the  Kyoshi Warrior for any signs of deception. Finding nothing out of the ordinary, Ty Lee scoots forward and carefully releases her elbow from her own protective grip. She takes the  waterskin and resists the urge to succumb to desperation as the water passes over her lips and down her dry, aching throat.

“I know this is sudden,”  Suki says as Ty Lee continues to drink, “and I know we need to get someone to look at that arm of yours, but right now, I need you to come with me. Okay?”

With the  waterskin empty, Ty Lee drains the last few droplets of water before tossing the skin into the space between herself and her  Kyoshi Warrior captor. She wants to ask why, better yet she wants to refuse, but she knows she doesn’t have much of a choice in the matter. It’s do what they say, or get beaten senseless until she changes her mind and does what they say anyway. At  least right now no one is yelling or thrashing. At least right now she’s being spoken to like she’s a person again, treated with something that resembles dignity. 

Having no other choice, Ty Lee nods. She allows  Suki to help her to her feet which are for the first time in her life not steady and sure beneath her. She feels dizzy and unstable, like she’s standing on a wooden sail boat in uncertain waters. She closes her eyes and shakes her head slowly, swallowing thickly as she tries to regain a sense of balance. “How long?” she manages to ask, and  Suki seems to understand.

“ A week , give or take,” she says. “We had to neutralize  Zuko and  Azula before we could proceed and, as I’m sure you’re aware, they’re both too stubborn for their own good.”

Ty Lee nods, knowing exactly what  Suki means, but fearing it all the same.

She presses her lips into a thin line, winces, and then hisses with pain as  Suki apologizes and stretches out Ty Lee’s arm to cuff her hands together. She hears  Suki mutter something like, “Spirits, I hope it isn’t broken,” and Ty Lee swallows thickly at the thought. She’s never had a broken bone before, but this radiating, constant pain is also something new and unfamiliar.

Once she’s sufficiently neutralized, her ankles and wrists chained together, Ty Lee is escorted out of her cell and through the dimly lit halls of the underground resistance stronghold.  Suki walks slow enough for Ty Lee’s unusually shaky legs to keep pace, and she warns her ahead of time when the pathways become narrow, winding, and all around hazardous. As far as captors go,  Suki is the best she’s had in  this past grueling  week. At least the  Kyoshi woman treats her like a person.

These past  several days feel like an endless nightmare that she can’t escape from. Day in and day out, Ty Lee was subject to the worst of humanity. She’s been humiliated , violated ,  and beaten and left to rot. Forgotten. And now, even as someone is showing her the slightest glimpse of kindness, she takes each step with caution and fear; horrified that this is all a dream, terrified that she’s walking into something even worse than the treatment she has endured so far.

But that’s just it, isn’t it? It could be worse. It could  _ always  _ be worse.

Ty Lee wonders what it’s been like for Mai, for  Zuko and  Azula . Was Mai treated the way  Suki seems to have assumed Ty Lee was supposed to be treated? Or did she face a similar experience? And what did she mean by ‘neutralize’? What did they do to  Azula ? Make her docile? Take away her bending? How would they even do that, and what, exactly, would something like that entail?

She opens her mouth to ask about it, but the questions don’t form on her lips. She closes her mouth, lips pressing into a hard line as she follows aimlessly behind  Suki through an increasingly narrow hallway. Maybe asking about her friends isn't the question she should be asking. Maybe the question she needs to ask, the question that’s sitting on the tip of her tongue, is “Where are you taking me?”

Suki looks over her shoulder. She’s not smiling anymore, but she makes a point express through her features that Ty Lee shouldn’t be scared or worried. Her aura seems honest enough in its intent, but Ty Lee knows that even if it wasn’t, it wouldn’t change anything. She has to go with her, no matter where it is she’s going. 

Unfortunately, that expression is all Ty Lee gets for an answer because  Suki stops them about five feet away from a fork in the path and proclaims, “We’re here.”

This area of the underground base, fortress, whatever this is... it’s different from the area she had been in all this time. It’s colder, a lot colder, and deeper underground, and darker too. There are not torches here, no fire of any kind. The only light is pale and weak, and comes from lanterns of light bugs. There are no people around here either, well, other than the sole guard that’s leaning with their back against the wall and their eyes closed. Where Ty Lee had been before, people were constantly trekking back and forth. She heard dozens of conversations. This place – this dank, narrow pathway so far beneath the surface of the earth – it’s far more worrying than the prison wing she had been placed in before.

Ty Lee bites her bottom lip and swallows thickly, watching as  Suki nods to the guard. The guard groans lazily and pushes off the wall with his shoulders. Ty Lee can see that he’s got a large forehead and flat nose and his eyes are dark and beady. She notices burns on his neck and arms, and she bites down even harder on her lip at the thought of the  firebender responsible for such atrocious actions. That she and the others, that  Azula , might face unnecessary wrath at the hands of a hurt man. 

The guard looks her up and down and clicks his tongue against his teeth. “Seriously?” he asks, turning to  Suki .

Suki nods. “Unfortunately,” she confirms. 

“And we’re still going through with it?”

“Not like we have much else of a choice,”  Suki says.

The guard shrugs. “Alright,” he says and then with a stomp of his foot and a sweep of his arms, the wall he was leaning on drops.

Suki looks at Ty Lee and then gives her a gentle push between her shoulder blades. “Go on,” she tells her.

Ty Lee nods, still staring into the dimly lit room and completely lost with uncertainty over what awaits in her shadows beyond the doorway. Despite her hesitance, she forces her feet to move. She steps through the threshold, her shackles jingling as she shuffles into the little room. She squints into the dim light, her eyes adjusting to the dark shadows that cast like spell over the room. Like the narrow hallways, this room has light bug lanterns on two of the four walls that give off only just enough light for Ty Lee to make out a human shaped, shadowy figure sitting in what appears to be a wooden chair. Their shackled like she is, ankles and wrists bound together with iron chains that slosh and jingle as the figure pushes up off their knees and stands up straight.

“ Azula ?” 

“Ty Lee,”  Azula says. She steps forward, the low lantern light playing games with her sharp features. She’s not in her armor anymore, reduced to wearing just the wine-red silks she had worn underneath, now tattered and filthy. The golden hairpiece she usually wears is gone, and her hair  is long and flowing down her shoulders. She’s not bruised or abused, but her lips are fiercely chapped and her skin is pale and paper thin. She looks starved, dehydrated, and for some reason she’s shivering in the cold. 

Azula grabs her shoulder, looks Ty Lee up and down with an angry scowl and says, “What happened to you? What did they do?”

“Nothing,” Ty Lee promises quickly. “I’m fine.”

Azula doesn’t appear to believe her, but she doesn’t need  Azula to believe her. She just needs her to understand that it isn’t something worth their time. It’s not something she can’t deal with on her own.

“What did they do to you?”

“Nothing I can’t handle,”  Azula tells her. 

And Ty Lee knows that. She does. There’s nothing anyone can do to  Azula that she can’t handle at this point. She’s rock solid; unyielding and immovable. When she sets her mind to something there isn't a thing in this world that can damage her, not really. Not anymore. Still, that doesn’t mean she deserves for people to find that out the hard way. No,  Azula’s been through enough already. Not that she would ever admit it. 

Azula snatches her wrist and pulls her arm up to the light. “You call this nothing,” she asks when Ty Lee winces with pain and her angry, discolored, swollen mess of an elbow is exposed for  Azula to see. “This is unacceptable.”

“I’m fine,” she insists.

“Bullshit.”  Azula cranes her neck around and looks into the shadows, and it's in this moment that Ty Lee realizes they aren’t alone. “And you expect me to cooperate when your people are abusing mine?”

Sokka steps into the light and Ty Lee suddenly feels embarrassed over the fact that she didn’t notice his presence sooner. “Honestly, when it comes to you,” he says, scratching the side of his head. “I don’t expect anything.”

“Excellent,”  Azula says. “Then we can agree that this is a waste of all of our time.”

“No, we can’t.”  Sokka’s eyes scan over  Azula , then Ty Lee, and back to  Azula again. “We brought you Ty Lee, like you asked. We said she’s still alive and—”

“You said she was unharmed,”  Azula insists. “What the fuck do you call this?”

Sokka looks at Ty Lee again and sighs. “An unfortunate mishap. There was likely a miscommunication with our guards.”

“No, this is a drastic oversight. If you can’t manage your own people then it's only a matter of time before this operation of yours blows up in your face.”

“You Fire Nation lot deserve every bit of misery you can find after everything you’ve done. Don’t blame me for your own karmic justice.”  Sokka crosses his arms over his chest, circles around the room and leans a shoulder into the stone wall. He bangs his fist against the stone, pushes off the wall and slowly begins to circle around them again. “I suggest, if you don’t want to see your friend in a worse state than she’s in now, that you start talking.”

The door drops again, and Ty Lee barely has time to turn around before  Suki and the flat nosed guard are grabbing her shoulders and yanking her back through the doorway. “ Azula ,” she calls, reaching out for the princess as she’s pulled away, but the door slams shut again, and Ty Lee is left staring at stone.

* * *

Despite  Sokka’s threats,  Suki takes Ty Lee to medical to treat her elbow and other various scrapes and bruises.

She’s sitting on a feather bed propped up high on a slate of  earthbent stone, kicking her feet into the air as she waits for someone with medical expertise to come and inspect the damage to her arm. The room is the largest she’s seen yet, and unlike the other rooms whose walls and floor are comprised of compact earth and stone, metal lines the walls of the infirmary. It’s a well-lit, warm room with six identical beds like the one Ty Lee is sitting on. There are tables of wood and metal lining the walls, each with an abundance of herbs, salves, waters, and elixirs. One table seems to be covered in bloody bandages, but the rest of the room is by far the cleanest and most sterile she’s seen.

Suki is still with her. She’s standing on the other side of the room with her arms wrapped around her middle and her gaze wandering into the halls as if she’s waiting for something. In fact, if Ty Lee wasn’t in so much pain, she’s certain she could take  Suki out and escape from this literal hole in the ground without too much trouble. The thing is, between her throbbing elbow and the fact that  Azula is trapped in a room only accessible by  earthbending and she hasn’t the slightest clue where Mai or  Zuko might be, it doesn’t make sense for her to even think about escaping. 

So, she sits as patiently as she can (which isn’t saying much) for whoever it is that is supposed to bandage her up and send her back to her cell for who knows how long.

Suki turns to her after several painful minutes and tells her, “Shouldn’t be much longer,” as if that even actually means anything and Ty Lee can’t do anything but smile and nod and pretend like this piece of vague information is helpful somehow. It’s not. If anything, it makes the waiting all the harder.

She bounces her feet some more, picks at the dirt under nails and cradles her elbow like an infant, hissing as she pokes and prods the bruises and bumps that are swelling on her skin. Several times she catches  Suki looking at her, but the woman’s gaze never lingers long, the exchange between them never more than two small, forced smiles or a gentle nod to acknowledge the other. 

“Finally,”  Suki says at last, pushing off the wall and walking to the door to greet the medics sent to treat her.

One of them she recognizes as  Katara , and the other appears to also be a  waterbender based on his eye color and complexion, but he’s more than just a few years younger. An apprentice of some kind, Ty Lee assumes. She really doesn’t want an apprentice trying to  waterbend her arm back into working condition, but she supposes beggars can’t be choosers. Even if it isn’t her fault that she’s in this state in the first place.

Katara is almost as cute as her brother. They share the same nose, same high cheekbones, same upper lip and overall, the same eye shape too, but his chin is stronger and her jaw is more angled. She notices  Katara’s eyes are a slightly different shade and that her eyelashes are  _ quite _ as long too, but those are minor details that set them apart, not things that make them look like the siblings they undoubtedly are. 

She hugs  Suki before looking at Ty Lee across the room and breaths a heavy sigh. “I heard about your conditions,”  Katara says. “It was never our intention for you to get hurt. I’m truly, very sorry for the way  Hokota and Yao treated you.”

Ty Lee bites down on her cheeks, unsure of the right way to respond. Normally, she takes everything in stride, tries her best to face every scenario and obstacle in her path with optimism and a smile, but that doesn’t feel like the right call here. She’s a prisoner and these people are not her friends. Their interest in her wellbeing isn’t something she should see as kindness, and she can hear  Azula’s voice in her head telling her exactly what not to say or do. 

Katara smiles softly and crosses the room. She looks Ty Lee over, frowning at the spreading bruises she knows speckle her face and neck. Her frown deepens at the sight of Ty Lee’s elbow and  Katara turns to her apprentice and speaks something too quiet for Ty Lee to hear in the boy’s ear. Turning back to Ty Lee,  Katara smiles again and offers her hand. “Do you mind?” she asks, nodding to her elbow to distinguish her intentions.

She nods and extends her arm, placing her forearm in  Katara’s hand, the chains on her wrists clinking softly with the movement.

Katara says, “This is  Ko ë . He’s prodigious when it comes to healing and has been training with me for over a year, so I assure you, you’re in good hands here .”

Ty Lee looks to the boy as he approaches with a vial of crystal filled with sparkling, clear water. He can’t be any older than Ty Lee herself was the last time she was in the Earth Kingdom. He gangly and stringy, with very little muscle definition and a lot of boney awkwardness to his movements. His hair is long, but shaved on the sides and drapes around his face like a sheet of silk. Like  Katara , he doesn’t dress like he’s from the Water Tribe, but Ty Lee is beginning to get the sense that everyone here wears whatever rags they can manage to find, as very little of it flatters the body types or complexions of anyone she’s seen so far. In  Ko ë’s case, the clothing sits on his boney body like large sacks tied into place with frayed ribbons of rough spun cloth.

“From the  Khawo Springs,” he says in regards to the water, bowing his head a little in respect for his master.

Ty Lee perks up at the mention of the springs. She knows the place. She had been there once before, five years ago with Mai and  Azula . It’s a good memory, one of the few times during that  adventure that  Azula let them relax and just... be kids again. They swam in the waters, talk about boys. Well, Ty Lee talked about boys, Mai talked about  Zuko and... can  Zuko even be classified as talking about boys?  Azula though? She just scoffed and rolled her eyes, called them children and other halfhearted insults that didn’t hit with the intention to sting. Still, the princess came around. Ty Lee remembers getting her to smile eventually. And even then, even as kids, there was nothing in the world quite like getting  Azula to smile.

“You’ve been there?”  Katara asks, bringing her attention back to reality. 

Ty Lee nods. “Once, yes.”

“Then you should know this water is very pure. It has strong healing properties. A little bit of work and your arm should be good as new.”

Katara nods to the boy and allows him to extract the water from the vial with a pull of his wrist through the air. She always knew  waterbending was the opposite of  firebending , but seeing it up close really accents the differences, even for a  nonbender like Ty Lee. Swirling his hands around with smooth fluidity, his wrists twisting and turning so his hands push and pull on the water, he forms a sphere and with  Katara’s instruction, he brings it over and submerges Ty Lee’s elbow in the water. 

Immediately, there’s a coolness that sinks deep into her bones and silences the screaming pain like a gentle breeze on a hot day. She watches, and  Katara watches too, as  Ko ë moves his hands around the oblong sphere, pulling forth the healing properties and soothing the pain away.

Katara , noticing her curiosity, decides to explain. “Some  waterbenders can use water as a catalyst to redirect energy paths and accelerate the healing process,” she says, smiling as the bruises began to fade and the swelling visibly reversed.

Ko ë continues to work under  Katara’s watchful gaze, and after a few moments Ty Lee can feel a sense of normalcy returning to her arm. She can bend it again without searing pain, and radiating anger doesn’t reach to her fingers and up her shoulder anymore. “Wow,” she says, fascinated. “We don’t have anything like this back home.”

“No,”  Ko ë says, his face etched with disgust and disdain in a way that makes Ty Lee frown with discomfort. “You don’t.”

“ Ko ë ,”  Katara scolds gently.

“Apologies,”  Ko ë says stiffly, bowing his head. He finishes up, pulls back the water and then discards it into a clay bowl beside her. “Good as new. Like nothing ever happened.” He stands then, bows to Ty Lee curtly and then to  Katara , and makes a swift exit from the room.

“Ignore him,”  Katara says. 

Ty Lee stretches her arm, flexing her muscles and testing her flexibility with a smile of excitement and joy on her face that she can’t at all contain. “This is incredible,” she says. 

“He’s exceptional,”  Katara says. 

Ty Lee finds herself again chewing on her lip. She’s doing it a lot here, but she can’t help it. These people, those horrible guards aside, these people aren’t at all what she expected to find. The leaders of the resistance, people Ty Lee has fought and opposed time and time again, treating her with kindness and respect despite being their prisoner. Talking to her like she’s a person and not just another Fire Nation extremist. She’s never been obnoxiously loyal to the Fire Nation.  Azula , yes.  Zuko , sure. But not the Fire Nation itself.  She never really got it; the pride that exudes from the people of the Fire Nation.  Still, that never stopped people from treating her like she was the one burning down homes and scorching farmlands.

But not these people. Not the Avatar’s people. 

She thinks about Mai and wonders if she’s alright. If she’s been treated better than Ty Lee or if, no seeing the state Ty Lee was in has at least prompted someone to check up on her. She hopes she’s alright, all things considered. She thinks about  Zuko too. Where he’s being held, what they could have possibly have done to him to ‘neutralize him’. 

She also thinks about  Azula ; that cold, dark room they have her in and whatever it is  Katara’s brother plans to do with her there. It’s like there’s two different faces to this resistance. Those who want to destroy every last Fire Nation citizen in an act of vengeance, and those who took the Avatar’s non-violent approach to heart. She wonders then, having seen both sides of that in  Katara herself, why she’s being treated with kindness while  Azula is being treated with hatred. She’s every bit as responsible for the Avatar’s death as  Azula is. She might not have committed the act, but it was her actions and her participation that helped shape that entire encounter. 

Katara turns from her, not bothering to say anything as she crosses the room. She does stop to whisper something to  Suki , the other woman nodding several times as  Katara speaks into her ear. But then she too is gone from the room, and Ty Lee is left alone again with the  Kyoshi Warrior who saved her from another night of unnecessary violence.

She supposes this means it's time for her to go back to her cell, probably with new guards this time around or at least more check ins by higher ups and Ty Lee accepts this fate with as much grace as she can muster.  Azula would have her head if she didn’t display herself as anything less than confident and capable even in a position like this, and she doesn’t intend to be anything less.

Suki gives her a soft, almost sad smile and says, “I  gotta take you back now,” and Ty Lee nods and understands.

She doesn’t put up a fight, and she walks willingly behind  Suki as she’s guided through the maze of tunnels back to her cell. She does decide, however, as  Suki works to lock the iron rung door that holds her captive, to ask a question. “Why?”

Suki looks up at her with a twisted, confused look on her face. “Why, what?” she asks.

“Why be nice to me? Care about my injuries. Treat them, even. I’m your enemy, right? So why bother?”

Suki clicks her tongue and rolls her eyes to the ceiling as she ponders this. Then, she looks at Ty Lee again and decides to say, “Because  Aang would. And enemy or not, I’ve dedicated my life to  the teachings of the Avatar. And if  Aang can’t be here to teach those things himself, then it’s our responsibility to carry it on in his place.” 


	9. Katara II

"So,” Toph says later that night when things have settled and the base is quiet. “What do you think, Katara?” 

Katara bites down on her tongue and thinks hard on Toph’s question. “I don’t know,” she admits. “I guess, I didn’t think this would actually happen. I always thought about what we would do if it did – the different scenario and outcomes. I found comfort it them, no matter what dark path it took me on mentally – but now...” 

“Now that it’s actually happening, they just don’t feel right anymore,” Toph finishes. 

“Exactly,” Katara says. 

“We’re too fucking nice,” Toph says. “Damn Twinkletoes, making us too nice.” 

They all gathered in Katara’s personal quarters to be able to talk in private: Sokka, Toph, Suki and herself, the leaders of the Resistance. It’s a small room, but quite large by the standards of private chambers and sleeping quarters within the scope of their underground facility. Katara sits on her bed, one foot on the ground and the other on the mattress, running her fingers through her let down hair as her friends all debate the reality that seems to be sinking in for all of them. 

Toph sits on the floor in the middle of the room. She’s covered in dirt, like usual, and her toes are digging little divots into the ground. Suki and Sokka are across the room, standing side by side with their backs leaning against the wall. Sokka’s arms are crossed and Suki is sharpening a knife, but neither of them seem keen on looking anyone in the eyes right now. Not when the weight of Toph’s words sits heavy and choking in the room. 

They hadn’t prepared to feel this way, none of them had. 

Revenge, vengeance, justice; it had been the driving force for all of them for so long. She dreams of hurting Azula the way Azula hurt her. She fantasizes about taking something from Zuko the way he took everything from her. They used that pain for years to drive the resistance, to fight against the Firelord’s global empire. And now that they have the two most valuable prisoners in the world in their capture, now that they have Zuko and Azula sitting in cages at their weakest point – just one angry squeeze around the neck away from death – none of them can bring themselves to follow through with their darkest fantasies. 

So, then, the question that sits heavy in the room is simple: what do they do from here? 

Suki slides the knife she was sharpening into a leather sheath on her hip and then takes the knife next to it into her hands. Next to her, Sokka clears his throat and lets his eyes roll from the left side of the floor to the right. 

“You two are surprisingly quiet,” Katara notices. “Nothing to add?” 

Sokka lifts his shoulders limply. “I tried for three hours and got nothing. She’s twisted and evil and she doesn’t have any remorse for what she did.” 

The _she_ in question, Katara knows, is Azula. She had asked her brother to try and get something useful from her while she worked on doing the same with Zuko. She hadn’t thought that it would have put him in such a foul mood, but here he is, depressed and down and uninterested in being any use to anyone. “She deserves way worse than what she’s getting.” 

“I agree,” Suki says. “Mai and Ty Lee, I understand. They’re just pawns to Azula. And Zuko... you said you thought you could get through to him, so I trust that. But Azula? Why even try? We know the longer she’s here the more information she’s getting. It’s only a matter of time before she finds a way to take advantage of us.” 

“She’s crazy,” Sokka says, finally looking up. 

“Well,” Toph says, “yeah. You’ve got to be crazy to kill a twelve-year-old kid.” 

More than ever, Katara wishes Aang was here with them. His wisdom and kindness, his gentle smile and endless optimism. He would know what to do, and Katara knows exactly what it is he _would_ do if he were still here. The problem is, she doesn’t think it’s something that anyone of them can do without him. 

“Okay,” Suki says. “Let’s talk through this. What’s the best outcome if we do this the way we initially planned?” 

“We destroy the Fire Nation empire by ripping out its roots,” Sokka says. “Best case. No more crazy Fire Nation royalty. No more crazy Fire Nation empire.” 

“But if we do that,” Toph counters, “We become no better than Azula. And then we're all forced to spend the _rest of our_ lives knowing that.” 

“And if we do this Aang’s way?” Suki asks. “Best case scenario?” 

The room goes quiet and Katara looks at her hands in her lap. She fidgets her thumbs, her nails flicking against one another in the silence. Looking up, she finds Sokka chewing on his thumb, Suki shining the silver of her knife with her shirt; Toph, pulling her knees to her chest. No one wants to say it; best case scenario, Aang’s way. 

“Assuming everything went our way...” Katara says at long last, looking at her thumbs again. Someone has to say it. Someone has to, because Aang can’t. “We help two people realize they’ve been indoctrinated, and get someone on the throne who can actually make things better.” 

“Shit,” Toph says. “When you put it like that... We have to do this Aang’s way, don’t we?” 

“What’s the worst thing that could happen to us though?” Sokka asks. “Being completely realistic, there’s no way everything goes our way. So, what’s the gamble? What’s the compromise?” 

“It _is_ playing with fire,” Suki says. 

“Literally and figuratively,” Sokka adds, his finger pointing to the ceiling to make a point. 

Toph says, “Well, for one... it involves convincing Azula to turn on her father.” 

Katara adds, “It involves convincing _Zuko_ to turn on his father, too.” Which to her, feels like the much bigger problem. 

* * *

No matter what she does or how hard she tries, sleep eludes Katara. 

She can’t stop thinking about the Fire Nation; that on the surface of this world, the banner of fire hangs in every corner. It’s a dark thought that takes her down paths best left undiscovered, but she can’t stop herself from indulging. She has to know what lies waiting in the dark. 

It’s who knows what hour in the night and everyone except the graveyard guards are fast asleep, but Katara is wide awake. She’s huffed and rolled, tossed and turned, but no matter what she does the gnawing questions persist. She realizes at some point, though its far later in the night than she would like to admit, that until she indulges in these thoughts there will be no sleep for her. She’ll lie awake, staring at the ceiling, streaming at her mind to be quiet until Sokka comes to fetch her for morning chores. And since she’s going to be awake all-night thinking about all these things, she decides there's nothing to lose in perusing answers. She’ll be awake either way and she might as well get what she wants. 

Katara pushes away the furs and the sheets, pulls on her shoes, and ties her hair up in a quick, messy bun. She taps her toes against the stone floor, wiggles her ankles to adjust the shoes, and then marches out of her chambers. She knows exactly where it is she’s going, but it doesn’t feel that way. Her legs feel like they’re navigating the weaving tunnels of their own accord, dragging her deeper and deeper into the mountain – closer and closer to the darkness she can’t ignore. 

She can’t help but think about those hours in the catacombs, lost and trapped with Zuko. It a confliction within her that she hates, but the memories always come back. The reminder that they’re not so different, that Zuko isn’t as terrible as she had always thought him to be, seemingly burning itself into her mind. It makes her remember the way he apologized to her, how sincere he seemed, how lost and broken he was. And now she knows that the Fire Nation broke its royalty just the same as it broke the world. 

The problem is, that shouldn’t matter. Things she learned about Zuko, about the fire nation, they shouldn’t matter. In the end, when she asked him for help, when she begged him to do the right thing, he didn’t. He made his choice, and that should be the end of it. Zuko is scum and his sister’s even worse. That’s how it should be. But for some reason, it's not. 

She has to know why. 

After her anger and shock over Zuko’s disgusting tattoos settled in her stomach, after she got over the initial rage and adrenaline of capturing an enemy she’s spent years dreaming of taking down, she realized that Zuko is still just as lost as he was back in that crystal prison. His life isn’t what he saw for himself, or maybe something’s eating at him in a way he didn’t expect. He said things, as ambiguous as they may be, that imply that he’s just as miserable, broken, and desperate as he was that day in the catacombs. That there’s something, a piece of him, that wants something different. Something more. 

It’s the part of him she saw back then too. A piece of the Prince that he fights tooth and nail to keep concealed. She knows it's there, and she knows he hates it, too. But it was there that day. And it's still there now. After everything that happened. Why? 

_You think I wanted this? You think I asked for this?_

Such a strange choice in words. And Azula cutting him off and controlling the conversation from the moment he lost his cool. It has to mean something, she knows it. It has to, for her sake, for Aang’s. Because if it doesn’t... if she can’t... 

Katara shakes her head. She can’t let herself get carried away like this. She can’t let herself succumb. She has to be strong for her father, selfless for her mother. She has to be wise beyond her years for Aang, too. Because if she can’t, because if she doesn’t, who will? 

“Master Katara? What are you doing here?” 

Katara looks to the young guard, an earthbending boy named Jao they picked up about a year back after a Fire Nation attack on his village. He’s small for his age, short and thin with a long face and a stubby nose. He’s got burns on his skin that peak out from his collar and reach up his neck to touch his jaw, and if she remembers correctly, he’s partially deaf in one ear. 

“You should be in bed, Master Katara,” Jao tells her. “A patrolman should be passing by soon; I'll have them escort you back to your room.” 

“No,” Katara says. “I want you to open this cell.” 

“I’m sorry?” 

“Open the cell, Jao,” Katara says again. 

“Ma’am,” he says, straightening his spine and slapping his hands to his sides in a sudden, stiff salute. If it we’re so late and if she wasn’t expending half her energy to simply stay awake, she might find this exchange adorable and funny. She might have even laughed. Spirits, when was the last time she laughed? 

Jao steps into the center of the tunnel and faces the wall. He sucks in a breath, closes his eyes, and then takes a stomping step forward to drop the stone door. 

Inside, Katara can see the prisoners stirring from their slumber on the frosty floor, Azula curled into a ball in the back-left corner, Zuko laying on his side in the back-right. Katara steels herself, her jaw flexing as she finds her strength and steps inside the cell. 

Zuko blinks wearily at her as she stands over him, but Katara doesn’t give him a chance to focus in on what’s going on. She grabs him by his bicep and yanks him to his feet, not caring that he’s fumbling behind her and struggling not to fall over when she drags him out of the cell where Jao closes the stone door behind them, locking Azula inside without Katara having to tell him to do so. She makes a mental note to tell Suki to give the boy an extended break the next time she sees her for his diligent, unquestioning cooperation in her late-night escapades, and then turns her focus back to Zuko. 

“What the hell,” Zuko wonders with a sleepy gruff. he rubs his eyes with his arm and then his palm, taking the time to hold his head as if it's in pain and rub his temples too. 

Katara simply can’t take it anymore. She needs answers. She has to know. She can’t keep playing this game in her head; this back and forth of wonder and hatred and hope and despair. She needs to know _exactly_ who Zuko is. Who he really is. 

“Talk, Zuko,” she tells him, pushing him up against the wall. She’s tried being angry, she’s tried being nice. The only thing left is to be desperate and she’s too tired to fight it anymore. 

“What are you talking about? Talk about what?” He asks. His lip is trembling from the cold, chapped and blue, and his teeth are still chattering in his skull. The cold seems to have done more than just negate his bending, it’s affecting his mind – his ability to comprehend and understand. But she doesn’t care. She has to have answers this time; she has to. 

“Everything,” Katara tells him. “I want to know everything.” 

She shoves Zuko again against the wall for emphasis and he groans with weary as his back bounces off the earthy wall. “I told you,” he says. “I’m not telling you anything about—” 

“No,” Katara says and things are getting blurry all of the sudden and she tells herself her eyes are just tired. That it’s not this desperation that’s driving her forward budding to the surface. That this is not because she’s gone looking for answers she never thought she’d get. This can’t be. She won’t let it. “Not about the Firelord. This is about you. You told me that we were the same. That the Fire Nation took your mother, same as mine. That you realized you were free to make your own destiny, and I believed you. So why? You have to tell me why.” 

Zuko looks down at her forearm that pins him to the wall, and then at Jao who watches wide eyed and shocked. Finally, his gaze returns to Katara, and his chin dips in a slow, single nod. “Alright,” he says. “That’s fair. You deserve that much.” 

Katara relaxes a bit, the pressure she’s exuding onto Zuko releasing enough that he slides down the wall several inches, and then slumps completely to the ground. He crosses his legs and puts his head in his hand, rubbing at his temples with his thumb and index finger. “You should probably sit down for this,” he tells her, looking up at last, his molten gold eyes staring into hers. “It’s a long story.” 

* * *

For a while, no one says anything, and Katara starts to think that maybe Zuko is playing games with her. She wouldn’t put it past him, though she doesn’t really know what he could stand to gain from it either. But eventually Zuko opens his mouth to speak, closes it again, sighs and shakes his head. He does this twice and both times Katara is stupid enough to think he’s going to talk. She leans forward a bit when he opens his mouth, her heart racing in her chest as if she’s about to be told a well-guarded secret. That secret, however, never comes. Instead Zuko looks up at the ceiling and pulls his knees to his chest before detailing a story that is as long, if not longer, than he promised. 

What Zuko finally tells her is the story of his childhood. How Azula was always his father’s favorite and how he had always felt closer to his mother. He details some of the exchanges between him and his mother, the lessons she tried to teach him and how they differed from the lessons of Firelord Ozai. He tells her about feeding turtleducks in the garden with his mother and practicing forms in the courtyard until he collapsed with exhaustion with his father. He tells her about the way his mother used to brush his hair with her fingers and sing songs in his ears, the way his father used to grab him and burn fingerprints into his skin in anger. But every time he mentions his father and his cruelty, he always comes back to his mother and Katara can’t help but notice the sad smile that plays on his face whenever he mentions her again. 

He goes into such detail about her, about his life with her, that Katara can see the picture so clearly it feels like her own memories rushing to the surface. She asks him what his mother looked like and he tells her, “Imagine Azula. She looked like Azula.” Katara does, and then he says, “Now imagine her kind,” and the image is there. Katara then asks him her name, and he tells her with a sad sigh, “Her name was Ursa.” 

As cruel and horrible as her own experience with her mother and the Fire Nation had been, she’s somehow still shocked to find out the truth about Zuko’s own mother. That someone would go to such cruelty towards people they’re supposed to love all for the sake of power. But then, as she dwells on this, she realizes that Zuko and Azula suddenly make sense to her now. 

He leans back, presses his shoulders into the wall and looks up at the ceiling of the tunneled halls as he thinks. He yawns, rubs his eyes again, and then looks at Katara, ready to continue. She doesn’t need him to explain anymore, she feels as if she’s figured out so much already, but he does anyway. 

“My father banished me to search for the Avatar thinking he could never be found,” he says. “All because I spoke out of turn. Because I wasn’t prodigious and merciless, because I wasn’t the perfect heir. I was just a kid. I wasn’t even given a ship, Azula talked some old ship graveyard into selling it to her for me because no one was allowed to even look at me.” 

Katara nods, somehow surprised by the cruelty of his life even though it seems to mirror the realities of her own. 

“I was just a kid,” he repeats, his eyes dropping to his lap. He’s fidgeting with his fingers now and Katara can’t get him to look at her. Still, he isn’t done. “I thought I would never get to go home. And after a while, I started to think I was okay with that. But then Azula offered me a deal and I... I had wanted to go home more than anything for so long... Fuck, I was just a kid.” 

Chewing on her lip and unsure of what to do, Katara sits in silence as Zuko reflects aloud. She wanted answers, and she guesses, this is what it means to get them. It’s not the story she wanted to hear. In fact, something like this is the exact opposite of what she wanted. 

Humanizing Zuko and Azula, realizing their lives weren’t as perfect as she thought, it answers the questions but she isn’t sure if it's at a cost she’s willing to pay. She doesn’t want to see people when she looks at these two. She doesn’t want them to feel human. If they’re too real, too human, then what is it that she’s doing to them that’s any better than they’ve done to her? 

Katara knows what it's like to lose a mother. But at least her father was kind and gentle. At least her brother always meant it when he told her he loved her and would protect her from anyone who dared to hurt her. She knows what it’s like to lose a loved one, but she’s never known what it's like to lose love all together. To be cast aside, abandoned and forgotten. And honestly... if she’s really, truly being honest... she can’t say she would have handled banishment any differently than he had. If someone else had found Aang in that iceberg and she was told that killing him would end the war, well, who's to say she wouldn’t have believed it? 

They were kids fighting in war they didn’t understand. 

And as bad as Zuko’s life had been, Katara can’t help but think his had turned out for the better when compared to his younger sister; a woman raised and expected to be nothing less than perfect while knowing that failure would never be tolerated. At least in Zuko’s case, he was given a chance to grow and develop at his own pace. At least he had his uncle to guide him and train him; forgive him, even. For Azula, from what Zuko detailed, tolerance and forgiveness were concepts never taught to her. And how can Katara expect herself to view someone as evil when she knows that these basic concepts of human decency have never been present in the most formative years of someone’s life? How can she call them monsters when it was a monster who made them who they are? 

She notices then the tattoos on Zuko’s hands, and its then that she realizes what Zuko meant when he claimed to have never asked for them. She feels a weight on her chest, crushing her and sucking the air from her lungs as she stares into the red arrows that peek out of his sleeves. Her fingers, slightly trembling with hesitation and uncertainty, reach out across the narrow tunnel and press gently against the ink on his right hand. 

Zuko’s eyes drop to their hands, watching as Katara’s fingers stroke down the ink and slip away again, retreating back into the safety that is the space between them. He frowns at her, lets his gaze slip away much like her fingers did, and silence envelopes them again. 

She says, “I’m sorry,” without even thinking and she knows she’s not in a position where she should be apologizing. She knows it's probably the dumbest, most insane thing she could be doing right now, but the words came of their own accord; forced their way into existence because when it comes right down to it, sorrow is the only feeling she has right now. 

“It’s not your fault,” he tells her, and she knows that. Of course, she does. She doesn’t need him to tell her that, especially not in _that_ voice. That sad, defeated tone that makes her feel even worse than she already does. 

“I know,” she says. “But that doesn’t mean I'm not sorry.” 

Zuko tilts his head, his eyes narrowing with suspicion and disbelief in a way that makes Katara think that no one has ever told him the words “I'm sorry,” before. Like the feeling of empathy, the idea that someone has wronged him and is willing to admit to the fact, is some sort of foreign language to him. 

He asks her, “Why,” but Katara doesn’t know the answer. Or maybe she does, but she’s just not willing to admit it to herself because admitting to herself means admitting it out loud, and admitting it out loud means making it real. Katara isn’t ready for this feeling to be real. She just wants it to go away. 

She settles on something less personal, a safe answer that doesn’t make her feel things she doesn’t want to feel and tells him, “Because no child deserves the life you’ve been given,” but just like his question made her feel uncomfortable and confused, her answer clearly made him feel the same way. 

He has to know this though, doesn’t he? She shouldn’t have to explain the concepts of love and care to a grown man. Still, he doesn’t look at her like it's something he understands. He looks at her as if she’s holding a knife to his throat, like the very idea of care and concern for the wellbeing of another human being makes _her_ the monster here, not him. But as she sits here, staring at her _prisoner_ who she’s spent over a week trying break like a twig, she starts to wonder if he’s right. If she is, in fact, a monster too. 


	10. Azula II

If she’s going to be entirely honest, she hadn’t planned for this ragtag team of resistance fighters to have a prison cell designed just for her and  Zuko . At least... not one of this likeness and effect. But the fact of the matter remains; there is no cell, in the Fire Nation – or anywhere else – capable of holding  Azula prisoner.

This is just a hole in the ground; a cold hole. She can get out of a hole in the ground. She could have done it plenty of times now. The problem is not  the hole. It’s the fact that she doesn’t yet know where Mai and Ty Lee are being held, and she  isn’t about to make her walk of freedom without the people she came here with in the first place. It’s much less impressive and  Azula does love to leave jaws dropped in her wake. It’s one of her favorite things. 

So no, she hasn’t escaped and no, it doesn’t look like she will anytime soon.  Not that this is particularly bothersome, this hole, she means. As far as prison cells go, she’s seen far worse back home. She’s trained for far worse, too. This little  blip on her radar? It’s like a festival compared to Boiling Rock. 

Azula expects that by now the resistance has figured out that she’s not going to be breaking anytime soon and have either started  discussing , or even implementing the next stages of torture and questioning  Azula is to face. She’s really not at all concerned about it, but she is concerned about her brother. He’s hardly the type to handle capture well and it shows on his face.  Any more than what they’ve already faced is threatening to be too much for him, she can tell. And if she can tell, then her enemies can tell too.  Which means that they’re going to question him  first and she can’t afford to let that happen.  Zuko will perform better if he has  Azula’s own performance to set the standard. He can’t stand being second best, never could, and she can use that to her advantage to light a fire under her brother’s ass and kick him into gear.

She’s barely got a plan in her mind, a hatchling of an idea she hasn’t yet matured, when they come for  Zuko .

It’s who knows what hour, late probably, when  Katara drags her brother out of the cell.  Azula doesn’t miss the expression on her face; the anguish, the exhaustion. It was desperation at its peak , and if  Zuko is half as intelligent as she’s willing to give him credit for, he’ll work that to their favor. 

With nothing else to do,  Azula burrows in on herself and waits for her brother’s return. It’s hard to keep her eyes open; the cold creeping into her bones and slowing her down. Her eyes are heavy and despite her best efforts, she can feel the need for sleep creeping up on her as she waits. Sleep is only thing she can do in this frozen pit, but  Zuko gone she doesn’t feel comfortable resting her eyes. She needs to be awake, alert, ready to press him for any piece of information she can gather. She needs to be ready to make her escape when the time finally comes. 

Pulling her knees closer to her chest,  Azula concentrates on what little warmth her body still holds. It’s like tending to glowing embers of a fire long dead, the last remains of something once vibrant and strong. She clings to the faint feeling of heat that lingers within her, remembering the  way the sun feels on her skin on a hot summer day on Ember Island, the way her body would glisten with sweat and the heat would prickle and singe her flesh. She drowns in the memories, letting herself fall so deep into the recesses of her mind that she almost forgets the cold bite of frozen air that pelts down on her in this dark little hole in the ground. 

With her eyes closed she can see the blinding light of the summer sun, and she imagines herself snacking on  fireflakes and watching the  firedancers spin and twirl. She can almost feel the scorching sand between her toes and the tight, pink burn of flesh on the back of her neck; the memories of too many summers spent getting soft and useless with Mai and Ty Lee surprisingly being of some sort of use to her.

She wonders about them; her friends.  Zuko too. It’s hard to keep track of time down here but she knows it's been days, easily pushing up to or even beyond a week at this point. Mai and Ty Lee are strong, she’s made sure of that herself, but it is her doing that brought them here; forced them to face whatever torture and mistreatment that’s been shelled out them because  Azula decided the fastest and most efficient way to learn about the enemy was to get herself captured. She didn’t even tell them about her intentions to lose, at least not Mai and Ty Lee. Unlike herself and  Zuko , they didn’t plan and prepare for this. It was thrust upon them at the last second, and  Azula wonders now if keeping them in the dark was the best way to keep both them, and their secrets safe.

She waits for hours for her brother to get thrown back into their shared cell, but  Zuko never returns.  Katara , however, does.

She arrives with an  earthbender in tow, standing over her with one hand on her hip and the other resting on her  waterskin , looking at her with heavy lidded, judgmental eyes that she thinks is meant to strike her as intimidating. It doesn’t, but that is neither here nor there. It serves  Azula no purpose to point it out and she doesn’t really feel up to toying with the woman’s obviously fragile emotional state despite that usually being one of her favorite pastimes. It just doesn’t feel like it can bring out any useful information; not when all three of her companions are now separated from her and who knows where.

Perhaps she could manipulate the conversation into leaking a clue or three about the whereabouts of the others. If she really wanted to, if she was really willing to work for it, she knows she could make it happen. But something tells her that she should listen to whatever it is the woman standing over her has to say. At least, she should consider the natural direction of the conversation at hand before she decides if it's worth the effort to extract the information she’s after.

“ Zuko’s being moved to a new cell,”  Katara says at long last.

Azula raises a challenging eyebrow.

Katara tells her, “We can move you to something more comfortable too,” and she goes on to prattle on about crap  Azula doesn’t care about because something’s triggered her anger now and she can’t stop focusing on what  Katara _ isn’t  _ telling her; that her backstabbing, weak willed, piece of shit for a brother rolled on her. After everything she’s done for him. 

“Where is  Zuko ?”  Azula cuts, not caring at all about whatever it was  Katara had been saying to her.

Katara puts on a feisty expression, her brows dipping into angry slopes. “That’s none of your concern,” she says, everything is  Azula’s concern if she decides to take interest in it. 

Azula sucks in a sharp, frozen breath of air and feels the pang of cold rip at her lungs as it clashed with the heat from her body. How dare this peasant try and tell her what she is and is not allowed to know about. They’re her brother, her friends, her subjects. Both them and this woman before her; her subjects to command, not the other way around. And this should make her furious; this awkward, powerless position she’s willingly put herself in. But it doesn’t. In fact, it makes her laugh.

Katara looks at her with skepticism as  Azula’s laughter erupts from her lips and she can feel the  waterbender’s confused scorn as her  chin tips to the celling and her arms wrap around her sides, literally holding herself together as her fit of laughter takes over. 

“You don’t get it,”  Azula manages between laughs, sucking in another breath as she regains her composure. “You really think you’re in control here – how cute.”

“I could say the same about you,”  Katara says angrily. 

"What did my idiot brother tell you, anyway? Some sob story about our childhood? And you’re just... what... being nice to him because daddy doesn’t like him? Because you think you can turn him against his people? Against his family?”  Katara presses her lips into a thin line and  Azula feels a cruel, twisted smile pull at her lips. “We’re Fire Nation royalty. We don’t break that easily.” 

“Maybe not,”  Katara says. “But you’re not inflexible, either.” 

Katara’s almost pouting now, her arms crossed over her chest and her weight swaying from one hip to the other.  Azula can almost taste the victory on her tongue. Just one, small nudge in the right direction and she’ll have everything under her control. Including that weak-willed brother of hers. Then  Katara says with the most confident smile she’s ever seen, “You act like nothing can break you. I’m willing to bet that I can, if I have to.” and  Azula’s understanding of this entire conversation goes out the window. 

Break her? How? What sort of control does she think she has in this situation? What sort of weapon could she possibly utilize that would get her to crack to the will of rebels?

“Don’t make me have to.”

* * *

Still focused and honed on the memory of warmth,  Azula has nothing but the heat of her breath keeping her sane as time ticks forward. 

She’s been alone since they took  Zuko and  Katara claimed that her brother had turned against her. She doesn’t believe it’s entirely true, but she does think that he’s done something to make them think he’s at least capable of swaying loyalties. A reason to sweeten the pot for him and make things worse for her; a way to turn them against one another.  Azula can’t blame her brother  for working the system to his personal advantage. Not when the alternative is to sit frozen in the dark for so long that even the thought of fresh air becomes too sweet to handle.

Azula is quickly becoming a creature of the cold and the dark. She knows exactly how many steps to take to get from one end of the cell to the other. She knows which corner best protects her from the frozen winds that pelt down from above. She knows which wall will drop so that food and water are replenished and she knows that it happens at the same time every day so long as she is willing to return the canteen and the clay bowl they had left her for the previous meal. She also knows that the guard in charge during this rare glimpse into the world beyond her frozen hole is young and meek and gets a thrill out of throwing her food into the cell so that she has to scrounge around in the dark on her hands in knees in search of food. 

In fact, when it comes to this guard,  Azula knows everything she needs to extract her revenge. She can approximate that this  earthbender is easily three inches shorter than she is, and the sound of their voice tells her that they can’t be any more than a young teenager. Physically speaking,  Azula could tear this guard apart in a fist fight, and she has every intention of doing so when the opportunity arises. But as the opportunity has yet to present itself, she’s taken to learning other tidbits of information. For one example, this guard is chatty with another who always seems to be around during meal replacement. Though their misplaced sense of security,  Azula knows that whoever this young guard is, they’re somehow the head of their family – and that all members of said family reside somewhere within this base. Younger siblings that  Azula can use to her advantage? Checkmate.

She lets several meal replacements go off without a hitch; watching from the corner of her eyes as every detail of brief human interaction plays out exactly as she’s planned for them to in her mind. She wants this to be spelled out, detailed to the last breath; as simple and certain as the sunrise. She memorizes the size of the rectangular window that drops at chest level for her to trade out an old meal for a new one, that the guard always taps her bowl three times against the stone to get her attention before tossing it into the darkness of her cell. She memorizes the way his eyes scan into the cell, first to the left and then the right; just like she memorizes the way he smiles at her with his jagged, pointy teeth when she approaches like a tame  koalasheep .

Until one day he seems particularly excited about pestering her – probably because it’s the only highlight to his otherwise painfully mundane life – and  Azula has finally had enough. 

Like usual, he leans down so he can see through the hole in the wall, his crooked toothed smile glistening with excitement as he looks left and then right. “Oh, princess,” he calls out in a way that tells  Azula that he can’t actually see her in the dark. “Got a little something  _ extra _ for you today.”

He taps the bowl against the stone and looks from left to right again. “Day old  Ashbanana bread. Just like from home,” he says, still tapping the bowl. “A gift from Master  Katara . Can you believe it?”

“I can’t believe it,” says another voice from beyond the wall. 

“Since when do prisoners get special treatment, anyway?” says the first guard. “Sounds like some bullshit to me.”

Azula , who is curled in on herself in her little corner in the dark, rolls her eyes. She watches as the guard sticks his fat fingers in her rice bowl and flings the sticky grains into her cell. Then he grabs the supposed treat, takes a bite out of it, chews it loudly, and then spits it out into his hand. He tells her, “how disgusting,” and then wipes the chewed-up bread into the bowl before tipping it over and letting it fall to the ground. 

She clicks her tongue against her teeth and turns her nose, but this only aggravates the guard whose need for attention is desperately seeking out  Azula’s acknowledgement. “I know you’re in there, princess,” he says, dangling a fresh canteen from his hands. “So, get your ass over here already.”

Azula groans and pushes herself to her feet. She kicks the bowl of spilled rice and chewed up bread to one side and then leans over, hands on her hips, so that her eyes are level with the guard on the other side. “ Chozu ,” she says with biting, lazy disappointment. She looks down at the bowl, barely visible in the darkness of her cell, and then back at  Chozu the guard just in time to see his crooked toothed smile creep up onto his ugly face. “You ruined my meal.”

Chozu looks happy about this, but the bliss he lives in is short lived. 

Azula snatches the guard’s wrist and pulls hard, feeling the bones pop and the muscles threaten to tear underneath her fingers. Her other hand reaches up and snakes around his triceps and she twists her whole body in a way that makes the guard screech in pain; muscles tearing and bending in ways they aren’t meant to move. She can hear his nails digging into the earthy door under his screams of pain as she continues to pull harder and harder on his arm; determined to rip it out of its socket.

There’s several more seconds of delay than she anticipated, but she soaks up the opportunity to torment the guard for all he’s put her through; still twisting and pulling on his arm as ligaments tear and finally, something pops. 

He’s screaming in pain when the door drops open and  Azula lunges forward the second the light begins to spill inside the cell. She grabs  Chozu by his armor and then shoves him back into the second guard. Then with what momentum she can build, she leaps forward through the air, drives her heel into  Chozu’s chest, and sends both guards crashing to the ground. 

There’s no time to deliberate paths, her instincts screaming at her to move, so she picks a direction at random and charges forward, climbing up the narrow sloping paths all alight with jars of light bugs that barely illuminate her way.

Another guard meets her near a fork in the paths and  Azula smiles with pleasure as she dodges two strikes of a spear. Parrying the third strike,  Azula grabs the spear and pulls it toward her, bring the guard stumbling forward just enough for their jaw to crash into  Azula’s waiting fist. She takes the spear for herself as the guard collapses to the ground, but loses it a moment later when she’s throwing it down the hall to lead her charge into another guard.

This guard, an  earthbender , drops a cylinder of stone from the ceiling to block the spear and with a stomp of their foot, the stone shatters and flies across the hall like an assault of stone arrowheads. 

Azula grabs the glass jar of light bugs and throws it into the jagged stone as she leaps backward to put more distance between herself and the bender. The bugs scatter; flashes of light spilling through the tunnel as  Azula turns on her heels and charges in the other direction through the darkness. 

She takes a sharp left at the nearest fork and then another, desperately clawing at the build of adrenaline in her body and the way it warming her bones. She’s one breath away from finding fire again, she knows it. And she continues charging through the halls because of it, pushing her adrenaline harder and harder until finally, a tuft of orange light spills from her lips and  Azula feels power in her veins again.

She takes a right this time, climbs up a twisting staircase until the bug lanterns became torches and the temperature of the halls is warm enough to defrost her bones. She shoves a woman out of her way, the sound of her shock and of an infant she didn’t know was with the woman filling her ear as their voices echo. One person in her path becomes two and then four, and before  Azula can stop herself, she wound up in something of a civilian area of the base. In the distance, at the base of the stairs, she can hear the shouting of guards as they hunt her down, and she knows it's only a matter of time before they find her now, but she’s got work to do and this is her only chance. 

Azula takes a moment to catch her breath and document the maps she’s drawn in her mind. She has no idea where she’s going, but she knows the path she’s taken and she knows it can’t be easy to track. Finding her now on the edge of what feels like the resistance’s makeshift refugee village is a hell of a lot harder than chasing her down empty pathways. It only helps that this whole place is a maze,  and no one has the spatial awareness and internal compass that  Azula has. She looks over her shoulder and then down the path in front of her that slowly opens into a large bustling market like street. She’s nowhere near the prison cells, but she needs to find Mai and  Zuko . She needs to find Ty Lee, too, but as far as she can tell, she’s no closer to any of their potential positions than she was before. She’ll need a guard, a well-informed guard, to take hostage. Someone important. Someone the resistance can’t afford to lose.

Another guard finally arrives and  Azula smiles her signature, cruel grin as she steps forward to face them. The guard, a woman a few years older than her with mismatched armor that makes her blue eyes shine like an accent against dented bronze and dusty, matte green, slides into  waterbending stance before her. She uncorks a  waterskin at her hip with the flick of her thumb and says, “Don’t make me do this,” which makes  Azula laugh, and then she flinches when  Azula rises to the challenge by stepping forward and popping her knuckles in the palm of her hand.

“I’d like to see you try,”  Azula answers, her confidence flaring.

A whip of water cracks loudly in  Azula’s ear, the sharp snap of the water deafening one side as the water coils back towards the  waterbender ; it’s cool, wet touch caressing  Azula’s cheek like a tentacle as it slowly retreats. “Last warning,” the guard says, twisting her wrist and reading herself to strike again. “Don’t make me do this.”

“What is it with  waterbenders and being too fucking weak to do what needs to be done? What good are you to your cause if you can’t strike down your enemy while you have the chance?”  Azula lights a fire in her palms; the crackle of familiar warmth causing her face to split with glee.  It’s an orange flame, but a fire none the less. Not that she needs fire to break out of here. It just feels so damn good to have power in her hands again. 

“ Azula !”

“ Kanoa !”

Azula cranes her neck over her shoulder.  Katara shoves past her, embracing the  waterbender in a tight hug. But that hardly keeps  Azula’s attention – she's too focused on something else to care. 

Mai still has her wrists in chains, but no one – not a single person in the growing conflict – seems to care that she’s otherwise unsupervised. She’s left to her own devices in the moment, no one batting an eye as she pushes through the growing crowds and stumbles over to  Azula . They don’t hug in this moment – why would they – but she does grab  Azula’s arm and gives it a gentle squeeze as they turn back to back to face down the growing swarm of rebels. Mai says to her, “It’s good to see you,” and  Azula responds with a dip of her chin as she slides into a fighting stance. She feels a wave of confidence wash over her and she lights a fire in her palms that flashes blue for just a moment, but just before she’s able to decide on her first victim, she’s stopped again.

“ Azula , wait.”

Azula growls. “Give me one reason.”

Mai says, “Ty Lee,” and raises her chain-linked hands high over her head like a white flag. “ Zuko , too, if he even matters to you.”

“You know where Ty Lee is?”

Make shakes her head. “No,” she says. “But they do. This might be our only chance to find out.”

Katara extends a hand before her and tentatively steps forward towards  Azula . “You’re outnumbered,  Azula ,” she says, stepping forward again.

“And you’re outclassed,”  Azula counters, letting the fires in her palms lick up her forearms and curl around her elbow in flashes of hot, flickering light.

“Maybe so,” she admits. “But you’re looking for your friend and your brother, right? You’ll never find them on your own. Just like you’ll never find your way out of here. Not without our help.”

“Mai,”  Azula says casually. “When have I ever needed help with anything?”

“Never,” Mai answers. “At least not since I've known you.”

“How long’s that been now? Fifteen years?”

“Sounds about right,” Mai says.

“Hmm.” she smiles at  Katara and shrugs playfully. “Sounds like we’ll be just fine.”

Katara says, “These people have been through enough at the hands of the Fire Nation. Don’t make them go through anymore.”

“I’ll do whatever I please with whomever I like,”  Azula says, looking around the growing crowd. It’s mostly soldiers, benders and  nonbenders alike, but there are others now. Young children with burns more severe than  Zuko’s , veterans with missing limbs on crutches, expectant mothers and the fragile elderly. Every type of person not suited for a fight, crowded in and desperate for a chance to see the commotion for themselves. They’re packed like fish in a barrel, shoulder to shoulder, one spark of fire away from roasting alive. It would be so easy, and it’s so very tempting. But  Azula keeps her eyes on the prize and says, “Maybe I should start with you.”

“I can promise you your friends,”  Katara says. “Promise me you won’t hurt anyone and I’ll return them to you.”

It’s very different from the threats  Katara felt like making when  Azula was frozen in a hole in the ground and the very sight of  Zuko made her blood boil so hot she couldn’t think straight. This  Katara is rational and defensive. This  Katara sees  Azula in a position she can’t contain or control. That means that while  Azula may be trapped, she’s got the upper hand here. But that doesn’t mean she’s going to take any chances. 

She thrusts her fist forward, a blast of fire pushing the crowds back from her position with shock and awe. And in the midst of the crowds backing up, she reaches into its congested depths and pulls one of the civilians into her grasp. Somewhere in the crowd, a child calls “mommy,” and  Azula knows she’s picked her prize well.

“I don’t negotiate with terrorists,” she says, stroking her fingers down the cheek of the mother she’s taken hostage. 

“ Azula ,” Mai says under her breath, her eyes looking the hostage up and down. 

“I know,” she says. “I don’t care.”

The mother, a woman a few years her senior whose currently heavy with at least her second child, whimpers at  Azula’s touch. “You care about these people?” she asks  Katara , lighting a fire at her fingertips and dancing it just below the woman’s chin.

“I do,”  Katara says.

‘Then let's make a deal. You and me and...” she looks at the woman in her grasp and presses her nails so hard into the woman’s wrist that the skin splits and bleeds. “This nice young mother here who has oh-so-much to lose.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!  
> Come chat with me at kiintsugi.tumblr.com


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